A Case of Integrity
by Inkpot satsuma
Summary: Set after Sherlock's return from the dead. Mycroft approaches Irene with a task of looking into the connections between a Czech agent and a barrister by the name of Norton. Sherlock is not thrilled to be out of the loop, but that state of things does not last long... Sherlock/Irene, of course.
1. Norton

**DISCLAIMER: I own no characters appearing in this story except for one Czech agent. All rights to the characters, settings and plot elements go to Arthur Conan Doyle and BBC.**

**This is the story that originally was supposed to be a pregnancy test one-shot, but it bubbled up in size and decided to be a multi-chapter fic :) It won't be too long, 5-6 chapters, I reckon.**

**I've been putting together this chapter in some spare moments between exams, so it might not be my best, given my severely damaged brain in that period. Still, I hope the next chapters will be better.**

**The title is my feeble attempt at being all BBC-clever and play with one of the original Sherlock Holmes titles. So here we go, with a small tip of the hat to Guy Richie's Holmes-and-Mary-Morstan dynamic ;)**

**For all you sailors of the Sherlock/Irene ship out there :D**

* * *

"Would you look at that – two. You owe me ten quid," Sherlock leant back against the sofa, spreading his morning newspaper open, but not at all using it to conceal a small smug smirk dancing about his lips. He could not help it if every, even the smallest victory against The Woman was so immensely satisfactory. Mostly because it was so rare a thing to happen.

Irene though seemed displeasingly unfazed by her loss of a bet as she snuggled into her spot on the sofa, regarding him with a small smile.

"Recall that it was my idea in the first place, that she was lying. _You_ weren't very convinced."

Sherlock cleared his throat – this time, the reasonable thing to do was to raise his newspaper a few inches higher, to shield his face from her – frankly annoying – smirk.

"You jumped to the conclusion fast, you must be more careful with your deductions," he drawled from behind the paper sheets.

"Hmm, and there was me under the impression you _like_ a slow beginning and a fast ending," she purred, and he needn't look at her to know the smug, predatory, intense look on her face. And he shouldn't look, because even the vision of it created in his visual memory pulled forward a selection of unwanted physiological reactions – quickened heart rate, shifted breathing pattern, slight raise in body temperature.

Since he didn't reply to her jab regarding his intercourse preferences, silence lingered in the living room of 221 B, interrupted only by him turning the pages of his newspaper and Irene typing fast on his phone, doubtlessly informing Lestrade on the results of their experiment which had just solved the case for him. Fine – proved the solution she'd suggested.

The sofa creaked slightly when Irene shifted her position on it, and the familiarity of the sound was pleasing. He'd missed 221 B throughout the three years of his death. Though the new challenges he faced while dismantling Moriarty's crime web were stimulating and rewarding, a sense of vague – _sentimental_ – longing had remained, despite being unreasonable.

He'd contacted Irene early into his feigned demise and requested her help in his task – she'd worked for Moriarty, accumulated data of his methods and organisation, and her mind was a match to his own, therefore could be useful. And was.

After they'd both returned from beyond the grave, she followed him to Baker Street and from that point stayed with him for longer periods of time, interrupted by her leaving on some business of her own. That arrangement pleased him – it provided him intervals of solitude which protected him from too strong breaching of his mental integrity and identity, while also provided a thoroughly satisfactory amount of her presence which, he must admit, though only in his head, was indispensable to him.

Recently, she tended to stay longer. The current visit was scoring its twenty-second day today. He didn't mind. In fact, he enjoyed it. She was a good companion, partaker of an intelligent conversation, and very brainy. Sexy, he thought with a smirk of amusement. Still, it was the truth, come to think about it. She was the first person he found sexually appealing, and he was putting it mildly now. But it all came second – both chronologically and in prioritising context – to the appeal her mind had for him, it was the factor that sparked the chain of cerebral, chemical and emotional reactions within his system.

It was an invasion and a result of sentiment, a factor he'd been increasingly prone to during his 'death', as a result of detachment from his natural habitat, psychologically speaking. His strength and self assurance had been lowered, allowing sentiment to come in. Though he didn't regret it, suicidal as it may seem.

Then again, he'd proved to be quite prone to suicide, he thought with a small smirk at his own joke.

His text alert broke the silence, and he heard Irene flip the phone open.

"Greg says thanks and asks for the notes on our experiment, so they can repeat it officially in their lab," she announced, and began typing again.

Sherlock folded his newspaper and peered down at her with narrowed eyes.

"_Greg_?"

She smirked, sending the text with a flourish.

"That's his name, isn't it? Don't be jealous, sweetheart. Not my type," she winked. "Not brainy enough."

* * *

Experience had taught Mycroft Holmes to knock.

Gone were the times when he could invite himself into his little brother's abode without announcement, with no scalding consequences. Entering the living room to find his brother – his cold, emotionally stone-like, completely asexual brother – flushed and in the middle of a compromising act with that _horrible_ woman was definitely scalding.

He wasn't pleased when he found out Irene Adler lived. He was even less pleased when he knew it was by his brother's doing. Still less pleased when Sherlock had enlisted her as his only cooperative for the task of bringing down Moriarty's crime empire. And what caused him to break his ever so carefully laid out diet, was the discovery of the inevitable – something which most people would call 'an affair' between his brother and the ex-dominatrix.

Years of Sherlock's precisely designed upbringing, intended to save him from emotions, had gone up in dust. The horrible woman had gotten to him. But, he had also gotten to _her_. And that was, perhaps, what unsettled Mycroft the most – that it was a mutual… _relationship_, a shared addiction.

Though as far as addictions go, he'd rather have Sherlock doped up on cocaine again (the dreadful late '90s…) rather than have his pupils dilated by looking at Irene Adler.

Mindful of experience, he knocked on the door and waited for his brother's permission to sound from the other side of it, before entering.

Sherlock was seated on the sofa, shirt and trousers and newspaper, while the damnable Irene Adler was very contently laid on her back across his lap, decked off in his robe and typing on his phone.

"Ah, Mycroft," his brother smiled mockingly. "To what do we owe the…" he hesitated theatrically.

"Pleasure?" Mycroft prompted, just as mockingly.

"Not what I was thinking," Irene Adler smirked. "Oh, John's coming this evening," still looking at the phone, she blindly tapped the back of her hand against Sherlock's chest, demanding attention. "I think he wants to propose to his girlfriend, Mary, by the way. So adorable."

"I'm not home if he's bringing her. She's unreasonable."

"Well, dear, you got wine in the face because you accused her of bigamy."

"I voiced _a possible conclusion_, made a deductive supposition, I never stated it for certain. And it was not bigamy, it was engagement."

"As thrilling as my baby brother's social exploits are, I actually came to see you two on business," Mycroft decided it was enough of the chatter those two were developing to play on his nerves.

"I'm shocked," his brother pronounced dryly.

Mycroft advanced towards the sofa they both lounged on, yet he stopped dead in his tracks as his analytic gaze abruptly halted its sweep of the room, fixed on the coffee table next to which Sherlock and Irene sat. The target of his gaze was an oval white stick, a rather unmistakable object, and Sherlock felt a surge of enjoyment as he realised his brother's discovery.

Mycroft slowly picked the item up and looked at it closely, blood ebbing from his face at a dazzling speed as he saw the result. He may not have had experience with many pregnancies, but he most decidedly knew what two blue lines meant on a test. His eyes were between murderous and horrified as he looked up from the test, glancing between his brother and The Woman.

Irene was about to say something that would most likely send Mycroft to an early grave, and since Sherlock had nothing to trump her with, he decided to spoil the game and thus save himself from losing.

"It's a chemical experiment, Mycroft," he said in a dull voice, lifting the newspaper once again. "We were testing a theory of a faked pregnancy on a case for Scotland Yard."

The look in Mycroft's eyes shifted into murder and displeasure as he scowled at his brother, some colour returning to his face. Irene was smirking, predatory eyes tracing Mycroft's every move, her smile broadening as he transferred his gaze at her. She tutted, winking at him.

"Oh, if it were mine, Mr Holmes, I would have owned half your property before the stick dried," she assured him.

Mycroft nodded, clenching his teeth as he looked once more to Sherlock, and the gaze he held on him made it clear he was considering ways in which he could force his brother into having a vasectomy, best right away.

Sherlock ignored his brother's medical plans.

"Anyway, whatever gripping and fascinating offer of a case brings you here, I won't take it," he announced with flippant boredom, turning a page in his paper.

Mycroft scowled, not much trying to hide a small glimpse of vindictive pleasure.

"You're slipping, Sherlock. What makes you _assume_ I'm coming to see _you_?"

Sherlock blinked in surprise, bright blue eyes peering over the newspaper in slight puzzlement, and Mycroft allowed himself a moment to enjoy it. He could see the brainwork transpire in his baby brother's eyes, two black eyebrows knitting together as he turned to look at Irene Adler.

She, in turn, was eyeing Mycroft and the area on his chest where his coat's inside pocket was located. Mycroft utilised a considerable amount of willpower to hold back a flinch that almost came to him when he had an irrational impression that her eyes were like a curious X-ray. She did seem to have that effect – making the most rational of people have the least rational of thoughts… Sherlock was a daily proof of that.

"Mr Holmes, I am so flattered," the damnable woman cooed, shifting her position on the sofa.

Sherlock watched his brother take the two more steps that separated him from the point an arm's length from the sofa, and his hand slipped inside his coat, producing a B5 format envelope from an inner pocket. He passed it to Irene who took it, opening it right away and taking out the contents.

Photos, glossy paper. First was an official looking photo, from some sort of publicly accessible documentation (website, archives, driver's license, passport). A woman, mid-thirties… no, thirty-three. Dyed ginger hair (original colour dark brown), brown eyes, round face, and at the time the photo was taken, she was in love (necklace with intertwining initials of two names, design clearly custom made, therefore a committed relationship, but silver not of highest quality).

Irene flipped onto the next photograph – this was a shot taken from a hiding, depicting the woman in a barrister's toga, outside a courthouse, phone in hand (necklace gone from her neck, no tan line nor signs of any ring ever worn). The date at the photograph's bottom was of last Wednesday.

"Georgiana Norton," Mycroft debriefed in his factual tone mixed with smugness. "Barrister, specialises in wills, testaments, hereditary property rights. Municipal services, but does private as well."

"And you want me to make a discreet but deeply running connection with her, of course," Irene smiled, looking up at Mycroft, her professionally predatory smile and gleam coming onto her face.

Mycroft smiled mirthlessly.

"I'm glad we understand each other so well."

"Well, not quite, I always understand you, but you almost never understand me… Sherlock, dear, you're in my way."

She stared at him pointedly as he continued to flip through the photographs she still held in her hands, looking for an answer to a question that flared in his mind.

"Why are you coming to _her_, why can't I- oooooh," he gave a long sound of reluctant realisation, and turned to scowl at a triumphant Irene.

"Yes, she's of homosexual orientation. And I need this investigation done absolutely off any radars, which is another reason _she_ will do better," Mycroft gestured his umbrella at Irene. "So there's not much for you to do, Sherlock. Except maybe wonder why a self-declared lesbian found you attractive in the first place," he added with a vindictive scowl of a smile.

Sherlock glared at him from under the black bangs. The movement of Irene continuing to browse the photos caught his attention, and he focused on deriving data from the images passing before his eyes. The next photograph showed Georgiana Norton in company of a man – suit, expensive brand and fabric but very severe cut, suggesting something between official and private. Sunglasses, cufflinks – not buttons, small gun under his jacket, concealed on bracers under his left arm – right-handed, therefore. Married (ring freshly removed, professional appearances, small tan-line remaining), no children (no signs and too young to have children in college age). He had nothing in his hands, and neither did Norton, which was a point of interest, since the meeting bore signs of being in business – Norton was wearing a black skirt, white shirt and a black jacket, impersonal, no one dresses like that out of their own taste.

"This man contacted her three days ago," Mycroft continued. "He is an agent from the Czech Republic – Pavel Janda. We suspect he might be trading information illegally with the American grey market. I want to know why he's contacting her."

"Has he got any friends with him?" Irene asked, flipping through four more photographs showing Janda in Norton's company.

"None."

"Ah, which is why you think he might be up to something illegal again…"

"Yes. And, Miss Adler, how are you with the Czech?" Mycroft questioned, raising his eyebrows, while his muscles stiffened, signalling an uncomfortable territory for him. "I do realise our records on you don't hold all of your… _exploits_," accordingly to his physical stance, his words were full of discomfort.

Sherlock bit back a smirk. Irene's workings were a bitter pill to swallow for Mycroft each time the subject was broached. The memory of her victory over him must have embedded very deeply in his mind, hitting right into his ego. His own memory of those events was strange, infested with emotions, yet even the feeling of definite humiliation and mistreatment as merely a tool used to pry open the way to his brother, evoked a reaction in him that could be classified as pleasing. Perhaps because it was so irrevocably connected to the surge of adrenaline in his vindictive deduction of her password.

Yet neither of those feelings were loss and triumph – those were the definitions of situations, and even if his feelings had been compatible with those two terms at the time the events transpired, his emotional memory of them now was different. Sentiment was a defect that warped and reshaped perception of facts, but he found that he could still see _facts_ for what they were, while also gaining an emotional perception of matters, though only those connected to Irene. He had yet to decide whether this was an advantage (a form of expansion of his own intellect) or a disadvantage.

"Oh, you don't know everything indeed," Irene winked in response to Mycroft's words, her smile predatory, sensual and red. "If you had _records_ of what I did with your little brother just last night, I think the world would finally see the infamous Ice Man blush," her words elevated his heartbeat with memories of deeply shooting, intense, deliberate pleasure he didn't want to recall right now. "Anyway, I'm clean with the Czech. I never did anything in the national dimension."

"Good," Mycroft's voice came out a little strained. "Money, I imagine, is not of much interest to you, but you'll be paid well if you find out what's behind all this."

"Ah, yes, that brings me to my question…" the light in Irene's eyes came from the brightness of her thinking, he could swear, and he stared a little, unfazed at his own display of weakness. She was radiating with a triumphant deduction, and he could almost smell it, hot and sultry and… arousing. "Mr Holmes…" his own last name slipping softly from her mouth, even though directed at Mycroft, sent a sudden shower of sparks across his flesh. "Why _exactly_ do you want this off any radars?"

She at last asked the question that lingered in his mind since the moment Mycroft spoke about that particular requirement.

Mycroft cleared his throat – a tell-tale sign that he would be telling the truth, though very unwillingly. Thirty six years of knowing his brother had some perks.

"Janda is the object of some mild conflict between us and the Czech, in the more… _secret_ diplomacy," Mycroft explained. "You two needn't concern yourselves with the details…" he continued, gaining the patronising tone that usually was the cause for Sherlock's rejection of any requests his brother made of him. "Nothing major, but nobody likes when even a small fish gets away from the hook. So we must be discreet. We might be able to finally get him."

"I'll need what you have on him," Irene dictated calmly, glancing over the short biography of Norton.

Mycroft said nothing, but nodded slowly.

"I'll also need a vicious uncle, verified family history – two generations back, let's say – and a will made by my other uncle, which the first one is trying to contest, thus forcing me to lawyer up," she stretched lazily and with the same agility that she used last night to – shamefully – make him beg for mercy. Twice.

"We can arrange that."

Sherlock was registering their conversation on a very basic, purely verbal level as he once more flipped through the photographs of Norton and Janda's meeting, in chronological time order. One detail stood out prominently, which seemed to have escaped the notice of his brother and Irene.

"This isn't their first meeting," he spoke, interrupting whatever unimportant things they were saying.

Irene looked at him with slightly puzzled but keen eyes, eyebrows knitted together over her sharp gaze, while Mycroft's own eyebrows travelled up his forehead as he tilted his head back.

"How do you mean?" his brother asked.

"He's not taken his sunglasses off. People don't do that with people they meet for the first time, it prevents a connection of trust, very instinctive but also somewhat right, I'd say being an agent, especially an illegally trading one, he realises that. Norton doesn't seem too uncomfortable, she's seen him already before this."

"Very interesting," Mycroft said without as much interest as he declared. "We'll have to look into that."

"And I'll look into dear Miss Georgiana Norton," Irene smiled. "My, my, Mr Holmes. I've never thought I'd have you as my _client_."

* * *

**There. Hope you enjoyed :) Next chapter features John :)**

**Turning Godfrey Norton into Georgiana Norton was another of my nitwit attempts at being BBC-clever. Hope I didn't fail too completely :P**

**I don't know when exactly the next chapter will be up, but I'm on holiday now, yay :)**

**Reviews are loved. Think car-and-petrol - reviews are petrol, story is the car.**


	2. Gods and stewardesses

**Faster than I expected. Parts sort of wrote themselves. Though I feel John might be a little out of character... if yes, please blame it on the residual post-exam-stress-disorder :P**

**So, we at last meet Georgiana Norton in person...**

**For** How Now Meow** and** Francesca Wayland**.**

* * *

John hopped up the steps of 221 B, happily responding to Mrs Hudson's delighted welcome. Ever since he moved out, during the second year of the painful period he'd never be able to view otherwise than Sherlock's death, the dear old lady was happy whenever he popped by – whether for a silent cup of tea or a just as quiet trip to the cemetery. Now, after Sherlock's 'resurrection' (followed by a rather tense period of hatred and rage John felt for the asshole, for making him a part of yet another strategy, yet another experiment, yet another… another _cold, egoistic case_), Mrs Hudson welcomed him always with a thrill.

He kept his 221 B key, and its presence in his wallet or pockets was a warm reminder he was always welcome at that address. For the first two or so weeks after Sherlock's return from the dead, the key lay tossed in a corner, and he passed around it as if around a radioactive object. He thought he'd never be able to touch it, all the more use it, for the confusion of hatred and relief he felt. If it weren't for Mary, he'd probably be a barely heaving emotional wreckage right now. But it seemed that reading all of his stories, his girlfriend learned something about Sherlock that he didn't in all the time they've flat shared – that Sherlock cared for his and Mrs Hudson's lives more than for his own – even if metaphorically speaking.

Finding out Irene Adler was alive was another shocker, and finding Sherlock landed in what was probably the biggest lexical stretch of the word 'relationship' with her, nearly induced a stroke on him. But there she was, with her quips and innuendos, almost permanently installed at 221 B and usually occupying Sherlock's favourite chair, sometimes even plucking at the strings of his beloved violin, all of which Sherlock tolerated with absolute silence. If that didn't spell 'love' for the brilliant sociopath, John didn't know what did.

By now, John had gotten used to the new situation in his life, as well as to the presence of Irene Adler in it. Actually, he'd gotten to like her, in a way. After a while he even got a grip on her humour, but she still could spring things on him that made him want to vanish.

"Sherlock!" he called out, opening the door to the living room. "Sherlock, Mrs Hudson asks if you two are up for a tea…"

He trailed off slowly into silence as he took in the scene played in the room – Sherlock was sitting in his chair, pale blue eyes appraisingly scrutinising Irene who twirled round in a dress. She then made a face, and shrugged the garment off onto the floor, marching off completely naked into Sherlock's bedroom, hips swaying softly, moving her slender waist.

"Wow…" John recognised his own voice involuntarily escaping his throat, which he then promptly cleared, with a mental apology to Mary.

Sherlock arched an eyebrow, looking at him. He cleared his throat again.

"Hi, hmm… Hi. How… are you doing?"

"Good," was the slow and disinterested reply.

"Hello, John," Irene's voice called out cordially from the bedroom.

"Hi."

"You're going to have a new story to write," The Woman announced as she revealed herself again, this time dressed in a pale blue shirt and a black skirt.

"You look like a door-to-door insurance saleswoman," Sherlock informed her with a snarl of absolute disapproval.

"I know, I'm only missing a tie and a name tag."

"What story?" John asked as Irene disappeared again.

"The one you're not going to write," Sherlock informed with a drawl.

"Poor baby is jealous," Irene's smirk was actually audible. "His brother came with a case to me. You know, John, I think you were right all along with the sibling rivalry. Thanks for that info, by the way… it came in handy a few times. That cute little blog of yours is priceless." Irene talked from the bedroom while John tried to ignore Sherlock's glare centred on him.

"I'm sorry… _Mycroft_ is hiring _her_?" John frowned and blinked, not quite able to process what he'd just heard.

"Yes," Sherlock breathed out in a long drawl.

"I'm going to seduce a testament lawyer and see what she's up to with a Czech agent," Irene's voice reached them from the bedroom again. "Or, what he's up to with her, because clearly it's he who contacted her first…"

"Clearly," Sherlock repeated dryly.

John nodded, humming to himself contemplatively, before turning his eyes to his friend who proceeded to sulk massively in the chair. He knew that look. The _wall_ knew that look, it must have seen a lot of it before Sherlock put a handful of bullets into it.

"So…" John started softly, failing to hide a smile. He really should know better than to poke a sulky bear, but this was just too good to miss out on. "What exactly are you jealous about?"

The major downside of teasing Sherlock in such ways, was that he often honestly didn't _get_ the jokes, thanks to his habit of going through life without much deeper running emotions and not experiencing some things because of that. Now it was the same – the absent, cold eyes flickered over to him, black eyebrows knitting together in puzzlement.

"You know… the case or the lawyer?" having to explain to the brilliant detective that he'd just been insulted really took much fun out of the deal, and John briefly wondered if it was a strategy Sherlock deployed purposefully for that.

"Don't be absurd!" Sherlock hissed with a snarl, bristling up all at once.

A different skirt flopped down on the doorstep, thrown back in rejection, soon followed by a feminine pink newsboy cap and a belt studded with sparkling glass _things_ that John didn't know the name of.

"Cartographer?" Sherlock called suggestively, raising his eyebrows in boredom.

"Oh, yes, that's very you – god complex," Irene called back from the room.

"Stage director."

"Again – god complex! You're awfully one-lined, you know?" Irene peered out from behind the doorframe, sending Sherlock a taunting grin, and that was about all that John saw before quickly looking away, since she was naked again.

"What's going on?" he asked when she disappeared back into the room.

"Obviously, she's choosing a disguise," replied Sherlock.

"Oh," John nodded, glancing at the pile of strewn clothes. On occasions, the resemblances between Sherlock and Irene were slightly spooky. He'd say they were absolutely and completely made and meant for each other, if voicing that didn't put him in immediate risk of being severely maimed by both sides.

After another moment and a green shoe tossed out the door, Irene stepped out, smiling with almost burning satisfaction as she presented herself, then twirled around, facing them with an entirely transformed facial expression – sweet, with a dreamer's look, but also very direct. She wore a white lace skirt, pale green blouse and a loose coffee coloured short jacket to match.

"Ah," Sherlock said dryly. "And in professional life?"

The sweetness vanished from her face, replaced by a smirk and victory, and John frowned, wondering what she was about to say. Going by her expression, Sherlock wasn't supposed to like it too much.

"Stewardess."

His friend scowled, suddenly very alike to his brother (another thing the detective wouldn't be thrilled to hear), while Irene beamed cheekily at him.

"Hilarious."

"Oh, dear, what is the matter?" she cooed, approaching him in an elastic step that made her hips sway energetically on a wide line. "Don't you like airplanes? Any bad memories?" she brushed her fingertips under his chin.

"And what does that say about you?" Sherlock ignored her teasing. "In the sky – untouchable, figure of authority and stereotypical desire…"

"Don't forget having people instantly do as I tell them," she grinned widely, slinking down to sit on his lap.

"Of course," Sherlock's murmur was so deep and quiet that barely audible, his eyes absolutely glued to hers, and John could no longer fight back a cough to at least slightly dilute the tension between the two.

Neither was fazed by his subtly manifested discomfort. Irene, in fact, seemed to get off on that, but she did that ever since he first met her. She simply sent him a teasing smirk and shifted her position, turning around and resting her back against Sherlock's chest, which situated his head rested against her shoulder. She used that to lazily thread a hand into his hair, and John watched a strange new expression emerge in the depth of Sherlock's blue eyes. Tensed, but absent, and… sort of… deep. Heck, desirous even.

He realised the pair of intelligent creatures with prominent cheekbones was watching him almost expectantly, and he sat down in the chair he usually used to occupy back in the days of flat sharing with Sherlock.

"So… you're not on the case at all?" he asked.

"Not yet."

"Oh?"

"I will, once they run into a problem they need me to solve," Sherlock replied with his usual modesty.

"You're Mycroft Holmes' little brother, junior, I don't think your involvement would help, since Janda knows Mycroft," Irene pointed out, and Sherlock scowled once more, though John didn't know if it was a reaction to her predatorily condescending words or to the fact that she just rather painfully twisted a strand of his hair around her finger.

"Um, for those of us not so well informed…" John raised his eyebrows expectantly.

"Janda is a Czech agent whom Mycroft suspects of dealing under the table with Americans. He tried to get him a few times, but failed, unsurprisingly. Now Janda made contact with a testament lawyer Georgiana Norton, and Mycroft want to know what's going on, as discreetly as possible, of course," Sherlock explained, raining the information all on one breath.

"Ah. So Mycroft wants you to get together with that lawyer woman to get information from her… nice. Very, uh… humanitarian."

Irene smiled.

"Don't worry, I'll be delicate. I've got no interest in harming her."

"That's kind. So, when are you starting?"

"Tomorrow. I'm having a hard time battling my vicious uncle who wants to soak up every penny of what my other uncle left me in his will."

"Mind if I pop by in the evening to hear all about it?" John asked.

"Do you really want to write about that?" Sherlock frowned with disbelief – apparently, the idea of a detective story where he didn't play the lead, didn't quite add up in his mind.

"It's interesting," he shrugged. "And Mary's going away for the weekend on a conference."

"_Interesting_," Sherlock mouthed mockingly at the same time to himself, apparently still riddled with disbelief.

When leaving about an hour later, John almost felt guilty for leaving Irene Adler alone with Sherlock in the state of full-blown sulk. But, on the other hand, if there was anyone to manage Sherlock in that particular state, it was she. She certainly would be able to whip him into shape- _no… no, bad thought, bad thought_. John groaned, fervently trying to wipe the image that appeared in his mind, and which involved Sherlock, Irene and her riding crop.

_Very bad thought_.

* * *

He was very obviously mistaken if he thought she couldn't see him, of course. When she left the flat, he was sulking extremely demonstratively on the sofa, wrapped up in his robe and refusing nutrition from Mrs Hudson. When she got out of the cab and bought an ice cream cone in order to leave a few crumbs on her shirt, she had the sense of being observed. And when she approached the building housing the office in which Georgiana Norton worked, she caught a glimpse of a mop of black curls disappearing among other people streaming down the street.

Having finished her ice cream (with some effort, it wasn't really a high quality product, nor was she actually fond of ice cream), she pulled out her phone and typed in a quick text.

_You'll have a better view from the eastern window. xoxo_

She smirked contently, picking up her pace and making sure there was a small residue of crumbs on the neckline of her shirt – it would complete the sweet touch of her character, making her more human and exposing the slightly helpless side. Georgiana Norton was a helper, that much was obvious from her career record – 90% of her income was owed to private clients, but she also did municipal service, which suggested downright compulsive compassion. Good. Much easier to get to.

But she couldn't be too helpless and incapable in order to appear interesting – hence the stewardess job, it suggested adventurous spirit and a touch of independence. She couldn't be viewed by Georgiana Norton as just another of her clients, someone she had to help, take care of and never see again. No, she had to make a lasting impression and draw her in. Lodge herself in her mind and linger in her thoughts.

The first meeting was the way to go about it. If all goes well, the sweet romantic girlie should be one pile of sighs and simpers within two weeks.

She donned on a hesitant smile, opened her eyes just a little wider, raised her eyebrows just a little higher, and knocked delicately on the door.

"Hello?" she peered insider with a smile, biting lightly on her lower lip. "I'm sorry, I'm five minutes early…I'm Erin Watts," she added.

"Oh, yes, please, come in," Georgiana Norton smiled, nodding encouragingly. Irene smiled, stepping inside and closing the door behind her.

Keeping the (frankly sickeningly tomfool) demeanour of a sweet person ranking her very first encounter with a lawyer, she approached the desk hesitantly and took in the woman's appearance. Norton wore her hair pulled back in a classic office-type ponytail, and her brown eyes were looking at her with a professional sort of warm welcome, but there was a spark of genuine interest in them. So she engages herself more or less personally into every case she takes… every client is a unique human being to her. Good. She wore a very demure and lightly applied lipstick, and her mascara was done flawlessly. There was a glimpse of slim bracelet on her wrist – elegant but minimalistic, silver-coated.

The office occupied by Norton was modest, not very personal, arranged doubtlessly in the same style as four other offices of the employees of the firm she belonged to. But the lawyer managed to bring in a few personal touches via a framed photo set on her desk – the frame was clearly hand-made from clay, broken once and glued back together, therefore of sentimental value, so probably a gift from childhood days, going by the uneven shape. In the glass door of a small cabinet behind the desk, she managed to see the reflection of the photo in the frame – two women, one of them Georgiana Norton, and the other clearly her sister. Another personal touch was the mouse pad with a photo of vibrant green grass imprinted on it. There were no post-its on either the monitor or the desk, but near the keyboard lay an open notebook calendar, filled with notes. She used coloured pens to underline – green, yellow and red, typical priority order. There were five wrappers after Quality Street in the bin – she liked the Toffee Penny best.

"Hmm, I've never done this before," Irene smiled a typical smile meant to mask nervousness. "What… exactly should I tell you?"

"Well, I think it's best if you start with the problem you have, and we'll see what else we need," Georgiana Norton smiled.

"Of course," she smiled back. "You see, both of my parents are dead, have been for a few years now… My mother had two brothers – Norman and Robert Midler. Uncle Robert made rather a lot of money in banking, with uncle Norman as his partner, and after my mother's death – she outlived my father – he left it all to me in his will, since he didn't have a wife or children. It was about nine years ago, and nothing changed since then. But, four months ago uncle Robert died, and uncle Norman has hired a lawyer to contest a will… this is his card," she produced a card of the lawyer Mycroft had effortlessly managed to buy into the scam.

"On what grounds?" Georgiana Norton asked, looking at the card – no reaction, she hadn't had a case against that particular lawyer yet.

"He says something about it being the company money, that at least 85% of it should go to him, as a partner in business, for further development, he says that uncle Robert made that money with his help, and that way he holds some rights to a percentage of it… is that legally real?" she asked, leaning slightly in.

"It depends on the whole circumstances of the situation and on the exact stipulation of your deceased uncle's will," Norton explained. "Do you have it with you?"

"Yes," Irene nodded and produced a black file from her bag and passed it to her.

"I see…" Norton browsed the document. "Hmm… unfortunately, it seems your uncle made his will a bit too personal – it always leaves the opportunity to speculations and contesting. He writes here _…to my niece by my sister, Erin Emily Watts, as morally the most fitting person to be entrusted this legacy_. Does your other uncle use that stipulation in any way?"

The will, written down under her and Sherlock's instructions, was constructed flawlessly to serve the purpose of the case.

"Yes…" she sighed. "He makes claims I'm not responsible enough… he never liked me, really," she gave a sharp, sadly mocking smile, arching her eyebrows for a moment. "I work as a stewardess for WizzAir, mostly flights to the Continent – and he says this will keep me from reasonably investing and managing the money, which were earned in a family business, so should be used to further develop that said business."

Georgiana Norton nodded, making a quick note in the calendar. Her warm brown eyes rarely left hers, keeping a contact that was thoughtful but not intrusive. At the mention of the stewardess profession, she smiled, suddenly brightened up with appreciation.

Good, this looked like the opportune moment to come out of the closet…

"Also," she sighed, making an annoyed face. "I once bought my girlfriend an expensive gift to keep her from leaving me. It was a silver necklace, and she left me anyway," she made a smartly self-criticising face to show lack of rebound emotions. The necklace touch was almost too classically beautiful a manipulation to keep a straight face, by the way. "And now uncleNormanuses that as an argument that I spend money recklessly – I bought an expensive gift when I didn't have much money, so I will become even less careful when I come into fortune, which means uncle Robert was wrong in his declaration of my responsibility."

"Yes, personalised wills are usually the easiest to contest… but please don't worry. I will do my best to defend you," Norton smiled conspiratorially.

"Thank you," Irene smiled back. "I knew Mr Huxleigh would recommend me someone good."

"That's very kind of him. How is he, by the way?"

"Feeling fine, well, not so much since he's broken his leg, but he says that thanks to you he doesn't have to worry about a thing and can sip champagne while laying in a hammock, tended to by a beautiful nurse," she laughed, evoking the same reaction in Norton. She had a pretty laugh, clear and merry – she laughed a lot, because she didn't seem perplexed about doing it at work.

"I'm glad he's fine."

"And I'm glad he recommended you," Irene smiled. "I mean… you've obviously done well for him, so I'm sure you'll manage with my uncle Norman as well," she explained with a mildly dazzling smile she used on occasions of first contact. "Do we need to make another appointment?"

"Yes, I'll complete the paperwork… I'll also need your CV, the documentation of your stewardess training, and an opinion on you by your employer – can you possibly gather that within a week? We could schedule another appointment for next Wednesday."

"Yes, yes, that's fine… I'm terribly sorry, but I can't stay very long now… I have a flight to Prague in the evening, and I'll be coming back tomorrow morning. Should I email what you need, or have it printed?"

"Best print it, it's always better to be secure. And have a good flight," she smiled as she shook her hand.

"Thank you very much, I will," Irene smiled brightly, keeping her hand in hers for a moment longer, looking at her with merry gratitude.

* * *

"I didn't know you're so very good at playing an idiot."

"Turned on or off by that?" she smirked, sending him a sultry sideways glance.

Sherlock scoffed, pushing his hands into his pockets as they marched along Baker Street towards 221 B. He was very obviously ambiguously suspended between excitement of a new case and irritation at being reduced to the role of bystander and advisor, the latter unwanted at that. Well, she didn't perhaps so much _not want_ his advice as not need it, actually, despite the idea she knew he had in his head. Poor boy will have to learn to share his toys in the sandbox.

Sherlock was bad at sharing – it was one of the first facts she noted about him, after which she proceeded to ensconce herself in the privileged position of being the one he did share with. It wasn't hard, since Sherlock's inability to share came largely from his cerebral seclusion, and since she was – all silly modesty aside – his intellectual equal, he felt natural in sharing with her.

Interestingly enough, the same occurrence she observed in herself – she shared with him. For the same reasons, most likely. And he was too positively adorable not to share with.

"I need to go to a Swarovski store," she informed him as he opened the door for her.

"What justification is there for buying her a gift?" that was probably the hottest thing about him – he instantly got things. "Aah… you have a flight to Prague?" his deep voice hummed in her ear as he entered the flat after her, his chest nearly brushing against her back. His breath washed over the shell of her ear, the vibration of his low tone dancing off her skin in deliciously unbearable sparks, and combined with the sheer cleverness of his words it increased her pulse by a few beats.

He was still standing close behind her, his body heat slowly beginning to emanate beyond the layer of his clothes and brush against her now extremely sensitive back. She could hear his breathing, rumbling deep and soft like satin, and she didn't look around, allowing her sense of touch to grow rapidly sharper and sharper, putting her in the state of achingly heightened responsiveness.

His fingertips touched lightly against her right hip, barely skimming over the laced pattern of her skirt and snaking their lingering touch over to her iliac crest with a strangely arousing anatomical precision and inquisitiveness. Her sensitive flesh tingled, and she bit down on her lip to hold back a vocal reaction to the way his thumb slid down the vertical slope of her crest, fingers tracing down to the outer side of her thigh.

On many occasions she noticed he liked her body, in probably all dimensions that the meaning of the word 'like' carried. He kept exploring it over and over again, mapping out every single detail with his touch, which frankly was one of the most pleasurable experiences she had in her life – not the intense, jolting pleasure nor the hot and aching nor any other energetic sort of delight. It was a whole new experience, unhurried, relaxing and intense at the same time, and deeply, thoroughly intimate. She was surprised the first time, discovering a new kind of pleasure, a subtle combination of tenderness, study and worship – an all new blend of sensations that left her simply soaking up the feeling of his fascinated attentions. Her body was an object of focus for him in many situations and variations, stirring an extremely diverse array of reactions in him, and she enjoyed every single one, from the ravenous passion, through slow study, to almost analytic assessment.

She took a step forward, the action taking more effort than it seemed, as she felt very reluctant to leave that smoky, thickening osmosis of sensuality. The tension didn't disperse, but stretched and extended across the room as she moved to sit in his chair with a deliberately provocative smile on her face, tantalized by the darkened look of his eyes.

"We're supposed to meet next Wednesday…" she informed him, toeing off her shoes.

"Plenty of time to prepare all the papers she wants from you," she never told him about it, and didn't have to – he deduced it.

"And take a look at the way she lives…" she mused in a drawled voice, narrowing her eyes as she watched him take off his coat. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, the way she liked it best, revealing that beautiful, pale, slender neck that could have come out as the work of Michelangelo's divine hands.

"I'll do it," he replied in a voice between offer and authority, and she slightly belatedly registered the sense of his words, which forced her to pull herself out of her positively sinful plans regarding his neck.

"Oh, no, dear," she sauntered over to him, not stopping until there was only the merest fraction of space left between them. "Janda is probably watching her. If he sees you there, he'll know someone is onto him, so you better don't show your pretty face around her house," she brushed her knuckles against one of those delicious cheekbones. They drove her crazy, almost making her mouth water.

He scoffed.

"Obviously, I'd wear a disguise."

"And obviously, we can't take that risk," she had to admit she was enjoying this new form of control over him a little too much. "Don't worry, darling, I'll tell you what colour is her doormat so you can tell me what injury she had in childhood, and everything," she smirked.

His eyes flicked down her body, and fingertips of his right hand brushed over the knuckles of her left, till they gently looped under her palm and lifted her hand, manoeuvring it with teasing deftness into pressing his thumb against her pisiform bone, while his fingers curled over the back of her wrist. The very fact of the precise arrangement of his touch transmitted to her the inevitable of what he was thinking and planning to say, the physical contact a catalyst for the mental connection spanning between them, and she watched him, the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist teased with the faintest of wisps that his breathing ghosted over it.

"_You_ had a childhood injury," he murmured, his voice hoarse with depth, and she didn't try to retract her hand from his hold despite knowing he could feel her quickened pulse. She couldn't feel his, but she heard his breathing deepened slightly, the air now flowing through his parted mouth. "I couldn't decide which it was, until recently… you fell off a horse and braced yourself – you had an fractured wrist. Cracked pisiform, healed correctly, but the instinct remains… I saw you shift your weight more to the right when you dropped to the ground to duck a bullet in February."

His lips were now hovering just over the once-injured spot, his thumb slowly slipping away, and she could sense and hear him inhale, his eyes cast down. The skin on her wrist now went into overdrive of sensitivity, either actually receiving the warmth of his lips of wishfully fathoming it because of her desire.

"Am I right?" his voice was the deepest of purrs, barely audible in its depth, and his half lidded, darkened eyes glanced up to hers. She managed a weakly teasing smile, not quite willing to pull her focus away from the feeling of his hot, damp breath washing over her skin.

"Almost…" interest sparked in his eyes, pupils narrowing slightly, causing her smile to widen. "It was a camel…"

He was surprised for two beautiful seconds exactly. After that, his eyes returned to their hungry expression, the notification of mistake stimulating him more and driving him into restlessness.

"Always something…" he muttered, just above her wrist, before opening his mouth wider and closing it over her skin in a hot, wet caress and a gentle scrape of teeth over her healed spot.

She closed her eyes for a moment, allowing the sensation to travel sharper through her body, and she released an exhale she didn't realise she was holding back. It seemed to ignite whatever he was needing, because his mouth left her wrist and promptly found her lips, while his hands grasped at her waist, rapaciously pulling her blouse out from behind the hem of her skirt.

Reaching up to comb her hands through his hair, she caused her body to arch slightly into him, joining them from hips to collarbones, and his moan reverberated through her chest as she sifted through rich handfuls of his black curls, relishing the sensation. He abruptly pulled away, sliding his hands up to her arms and coaxing the now opened blouse (he was such a deliciously fast learner…) off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor, before kissing her left shoulder, while his hands moved down to work on her skirt.

He was more frenzied to peel the clothes off her than usually in such situations, and as she took her time to unbutton his shirt very slowly, just out of teasing spite, she vaguely thought it could probably be contributed to his need to rid her of disguise, to re-emerge her real self, as he preferred her best. If not as they first met, she thought with a small smirk. Slowly, she pushed the shirt open, guiding it off his shoulders, and she leaned in to trace a line of slow kisses up between his pectoral muscles, enjoying his almost childish hitch of breathing as she reached the hollow at the base of his beautiful throat.

No longer able to resist her recurring desire, she pulled away from the spot, and with a deep breath of fulfilling satisfaction she brushed her lips against a tendon of his neck, before placing the first kiss, quickly followed by another and more. His skin tasted of freshness, _him_ with a palely emerging hint of saltiness.

She felt his long fingers work deftly on the clasp of her bra, sending tingling sparks down her spine, and her lips found his pulse line. She opened her mouth wider, gently tracing the spot with her tongue, feeling and _tasting_ the dizzyingly fast pace of his pulse, and it was the most overwhelming flavour of all.

She pulled away, forcing an eye contact with him – his eyes were dark, savage, almost devoid of thinking and yet at the same time more perceptive than ever, their look working almost like a physical sensation on her. She smirked.

"Elevated," she whispered.

His pupils dilated rapidly, with the hunger of a newly opened black hole that ravaged and devoured all that was within its reach. And then, he acted thus.

* * *

**There. We end with some Sherlock/Irene goodness.**

**Next chapter features more Mycroft, more Norton and more sulky/jealous Sherlock. And a twist :)**


	3. What lawyers like

**Sorry it took a while, but I've been down with a cold lately, thus tranformed into a slobbering vegetable for a few days, and am currently fighting off a throat infection. But, to compensate, this chapter is longer :)**

**So enjoy! :)**

* * *

His sleep was much deeper post-coital than it was on average. He also was much more reluctant to break away from it, the task of awakening fully, against his will, was comparable then to trying to get out of a miry swamp in which he very much wanted to remain. Therefore, right now, he was only slowly and dimly beginning to coherently register the nature of annoying interruption that broke through his slumber.

He opened his eyes, the surroundings of his bedroom hazy, and he focused on the persistent sound of buzzing doorbell coming from the doorstep of the living room. Assessing his own attitude of blissful sleepiness and laziness, he decided to ignore whoever was trying to reach him, and he closed his eyes back again, shifting his weight slightly, so much as his muscles allowed him in their state of strangely pleasant incapability. He'd fallen asleep on his side, next to Irene, with his head rested on her chest and arm thrown over her waist as she slept on her back. He found it to be an exceedingly comfortable arrangement and from the first try began to favour that particular sleeping position on the occasions they shared a bed. It sometimes had the bonus of coming awake to the sensation of her fingers lazily wandering through his hair and massaging his scalp with just the right amount of pressure.

Waking up beside her was another experience he came to extremely enjoy in a strange way that was, before, completely unknown and inaccessible to him. Though the first experience had been rather embarrassing – he woke up, not entirely competent cerebrally, and instinctively rolled away from her, soon falling off the bed in a tangle of sheets. The first coherent thought that came to him, as he watched Irene's delighted and surprised expression, was that he was extremely grateful for the fact her new camera phone was in a safe distance, beyond a quick reach.

The doorbell quieted down, and he felt and heard Irene's contented sigh. He knew she wasn't asleep either, both by her breathing pattern and her heart rate, and he emitted a quiet, communicative hum in response to her relief.

However, the repose from acoustic intrusions was short-lived. An energetic rapping sounded against the bedroom door, the drumming resonance invading and shattering the secluding silence in which his mind drifted, and he winced, for a brief moment certain he wasn't going to withstand that surprisingly destructive assault. Even drowsy, he was able to perform cerebrally with speed above average, and he quickly reasoned that the intruder first rang, then wordlessly invited himself in, and now knocked, which could only mean one person…

"Sherlock!"

Mycroft.

"Sherlock, get here!"

Irene chuckled suddenly, and he lifted his head, peering at her, puzzled, from under a mass of tousled hair. Her half-opened eyes were still sleepy, but already full of amusement that she apparently found somewhere in this situation.

"Sherlock, _get here_!"

"Don't look at me, he's calling _you_. I'm not going," The Woman announced cruelly, and rolled onto her side, deftly slipping away from him, and with a mercilessly contented sigh settling on the pillow.

"Sherlock!"

It was only the high plausibility of Mycroft coming with facts substantial to the case that caused him to get out of bed. Luckily for Mycroft, his boxers were one of the last things to go last evening, hence they were in the bedroom instead the living room, where Mycroft must have encountered the majority of his and Irene's clothing. Which would explain the agitation.

"What?"

Mycroft eyed his only boxers-clad form with a demonstrative scowl of disapproval.

"Give him a kiss from me," Irene's saucily satisfied voice drifted from the room, before he shut the door, following his brother into the dayroom. Mycroft eyed him derisively again.

"I know you're ready to do pretty much everything and anything she tells you, but please refrain from obeying that particular command…" he mocked.

"I'm not," Sherlock growled, frowning, keeping a straight and steadfast eye contact with his older brother.

The accusation of servitude to Irene was the one that annoyed him the most, and which Mycroft maybe not frequently, but definitely repeatedly, aimed at. He had yet to figure out what exactly was the goal that his brother had in that strategy, but he certainly abhorred it. It suggested lack of free will and correct recognition, and those were qualities he always deemed indispensible to the validity and correctness of his existence.

Another factor of irritation lay in Mycroft's deliberate choice of words whenever addressing the issue – 'order', 'command', 'obedience', 'everything', 'leash'… while the latter was probably inspired by Irene's own words, the rest of the selection was unbearably constraining, and Mycroft knew he never worked under orders. As John once put it, he was constitutionally incapable of obedience, and while that wasn't literally correct, the general idea behind the phrase was close.

He knew Mycroft was concerned, of course, especially since he kept repeating that in front of others on various occasions. It was a constraining form of concern, a parental complex instilled in him through their childhood, and which had him 'looking after' his younger brother. Though he very much brought the concept of 'looking after' down to 'control', which was, coincidentally, the exact thing he accused Irene of. Yet his brother wasn't so illogical and narrow-minded as to loop himself so much in his own actions and ideas and perceptions, so there had to be something else on Mycroft's mind. The idea of divided loyalties was most likely the answer, the reluctance to relinquish the concept of being the ultimate loyalty of his younger brother – it was so indeed, but only because Mycroft often, in the end, happened to be right. When he happened to be wrong, Sherlock wasn't obliged to be loyal. Mycroft apparently worried the factor of sentiment would compromise the integrity of his appraisal of situation and influence his loyalties, shifting them severely for Irene's benefit instead of Mycroft's.

But he didn't intend to waste time explaining the fundamental mistake to his brother. If he wasn't bright enough to see that on his own, he wouldn't believe his assertions.

"Well, what brings you here?" he asked, annoyed with the way Mycroft lifted his shirt off the floor with the tip of his inherent umbrella and dropped it onto the chair. His brother had a very particular and effective take on malice.

"I have the documents for Irene," he produced a small dossier from his briefcase. "Though I refused myself the _delight_ of writing her employer's opinion… I figured you two would rather do that, seeing as she's the one who knows Erin Watts best."

"So why do you come to me and not her?" he asked, taking the file from Mycroft's hands.

"To make sure you stay nicely put," Mycroft stretched his lips in a cold smile, his eyes twinkling with a teasing glint that reminded him of some of their childhood days, back in the time before his older brother began getting so much on his nerves. "Sherlock," Mycroft grew more serious. "Janda has met me on several occasions. He knows I'm after him. And he knows you're my brother. You cannot have _anything_ to do with the case as far as Janda is concerned, because all will be lost, he will let go of whatever he's up to. I wanted to make sure you absolutely _understand that_."

Slowly, watching his older brother with narrowed eyes, Sherlock nodded. There was something more to what Mycroft had on his mind in regards of Janda, but he decided to find that out later.

"Good," Mycroft said quietly, leaning slightly in with a small smile. "He's brighter than I gave him credit for in the past, so please don't replicate that… _mistake_," the pain of that admission clearly equalled the root canal from five years back, going by Mycroft's expression.

"Don't worry, Mr Holmes, he's been a good boy all weekend," Irene's fresh voice emerged behind his back, and out the corner of his eye he glimpsed her form – clad in his robe, again – sauntering over to him. "Stayed at home and didn't bother anyone."

She comfortably leaned against his back, wrapping one arm over his shoulders while the other around his waist, and climbed her toes slightly to rest her chin on his shoulder. The sensation of her body fitted against his was pleasing and strangely relaxing despite the actual fact of being held in a form of lock.

The corners of Mycroft's lips twitched slightly as he eyed their arrangement, and Sherlock could see Irene's own lips turn up in a responsive smile. He was well aware of being a certain sort of object in a battle of wills between Irene and Mycroft, serving as partially a tool and partially a trophy in those battles. Mycroft and Irene had hit each other's weak spots in the first game all three of them played together (four, including Moriarty), and since then they remained in perpetual antagonism without aggression. It wasn't a dull and simple hate, but a form of demonstrative rivalry, a wrestle of wills that amused Irene and agitated Mycroft. And in that particular configuration, Sherlock was the point of convergence, and also something that Mycroft made claims at, which in turn made Irene react with spiting him and demonstrating her claims as well. It had a purely entertaining character for her, while for his brother it was a reason to grimace, and Sherlock had no personal opinion on the matter, though he had to admit the idea of prodding Mycroft out of his extremely tightly locked comfort zone was appealing.

He felt in no way obliged to deny himself the sensory enjoyment of physical closeness to Irene only because it displeased his brother, therefore he remained as he was, contented with the arrangement.

"That is good news to hear," Mycroft responded to Irene's words.

"I'll make sure he behaves himself."

"I'm so much calmer," his brother assured wryly. "Any developments?" he asked, his reserve lessening. Outside of his skirmishes with Irene, his respect for her skills and abilities was genuine – Mycroft wasn't petty.

"I'm buying her a Swarovski bracelet today," replied Irene. "I'll see if I can give it to her on Wednesday or do I have to do it later… it makes most sense on Wednesday, so I'll try for that."

"Let's hope that proves effective. Keep me updated… let me know if you need something."

"I will," Irene smiled.

Sherlock watched Mycroft leave, tilting his head slightly back to brush his cheek against Irene's hair. His skin tingled softly.

"Thank you…" he murmured – it was only polite to do so, since she saved him some dull complaints that Mycroft would doubtlessly have issued, had he found out about his following Irene to Norton's office.

"You're welcome," she playfully nipped on his earlobe, spreading a rapid wave of heat over his whole cheek, and she suddenly left him, padding away towards the kitchen, the areas of his body previously warmed by her presence suddenly vulnerable to the cooler air in the room.

* * *

Because he had nothing more stimulating to do in Irene's absence (gone shopping for Erin Watts), Sherlock went over to help out Lestrade with closing up the fake pregnancy murder case. The officers were very obviously severely disappointed to see him without the company of Irene – even Lesterade seemed wistful for her presence, while Andersondemonstrated his regret by not holding back from any insults on Sherlock – from the most pathetic to as vulgar as Lestrade's presence allowed. The only person contented with Irene's absence was Donovan, who had gotten into an extremely unhealthy self-proclaimed competition with her. Clearly, her grasp on realities was severely damaged – otherwise, she would have instantly realised there was no area in which she could be _any_ sort competition for Irene. The very word insulted the natural order of things.

It always annoyed him how, when Irene would leave, Lestrade and his team would seem much less eager to greet him when he came to help on cases, visibly pining after her presence. Though what annoyed him more, was the unyielding instinct that the male part of the team had to impress her, shower her with attentions and keep attempting a flirt. Though her mercilessly ego-biting responses to their endeavours compensated for the discomfort in a satisfactory percentage.

Therefore, stimulated by all those factors, his negative mood was very potent when he returned to 221 B, vaguely hoping for either John or Irene to be there and possibly offer something to distract him from his pessimistic attitude.

Indeed, Irene was back – he noticed the signs of her presence before he saw her, and he instantly went to inspect the small cluster of shopping bags gathered on the table. In the first he found four clothing articles from brands below her usual taste in quality and very much in the taste that Erin Watts apparently preferred. In another, he found a tube of lipstick and one of nail colour – both in the same vibrant, garish shade of extremely energetic pink. Ah, the WzzAir logo colour, therefore she had bought herself a stewardess ensemble, therefore the empty bag previously contained the appropriate clothes, which she was probably currently putting on.

The fourth bag stirred more interest in him – it contained a small selection of body care cosmetics. A showering gel, a shampoo, a conditioner and a hand cream. The idea of that particular purchase evoked some unclear consternation in him, and he studied the sensation, attempting to figure out its origin and destination. When staying at 221 B, Irene always used his shampoo and shower gel, and as he examined the new products, he realised he became very much comfortable with the hitherto state of things in that department. The scents vaguely associated with himself had a both soothing and arousing quality on her skin and in her hair, the feminine pheromones reacting with the chemicals and producing a minimally different fragrance, which he found extremely pleasing and alluring. The idea of losing that enjoyment – however small it might seem from a relative take on things – was unwelcome.

"Why the hand cream?" he asked when he heard her footsteps sound behind him.

"Because the air conditioning on airplanes is extremely dry – it's a thing you subconsciously expect in a stewardess, to have a hand cream," she replied, and he hummed in response, admitting to himself the respect for her absolute attention to details.

Sherlock turned around to face her, and promptly raised his eyebrows – she wore a feminine shirt (sleeves ending over elbows) in the biting shade of pink matching the airline logo, a black skirt reaching her knees, thin black tights and black shoes on slim, medium heel. She managed to replicate the outfit of a WizzAir stewardess completely, exempting only the suitcase.

She smiled, her lips already treated with the lipstick, eyebrows arching over her eyes as she cocked her hip a little, exposing the curve of her waist, and raised a hand to brush against her temple in a gentle provocation, a mocking salute.

"I'm your flight attendant – fly me," she arched her eyebrows suggestively, sharp blue eyes centred on his in a manner that he found irresistible and imprisoning for his own gaze – suddenly, everything beyond the extent of her form was of no relevance.

He managed a small curl of lips in a responsive smirk.

"So long as there's dinner on the in-flight menu," he drawled.

Her smile widened, and she sauntered over to him with a purposeful step that carried many promises.

"I'm sorry, Mr Holmes, the Continental flights are too short to include dinner…" she breathed, slipping a hand into his hair, the movement spreading sparks over the skin of his scalp and elevating his pulse. "But we do the frequent-flyer benefits program," she grinned, fisting a handful of his hair, while her other arm wrapped around his shoulders. "Some say that's even better…"

"Sounds worth a try," he hummed, leaning in, drawn towards her with a yet unspecified physical and emotional desire – it was not a desire for sex, not when there was a discussion subject buzzing in his mind, but it was a strong desire of intimate contact nonetheless.

A kiss, he concluded, and promptly found her lips with his own, coaxing them apart and welcoming the heat of her mouth. On an instinct, his arms circled her waist, pulling her yet closer, and there was a strum of satisfaction lingering in his system as a response to her moan, an affirmation of the effectiveness of his ministrations. Taking his cue, he eagerly continued, deepening the kiss further, before slowly ending, biting on her lower lip as he retreated, tantalized with the softly resistant way in which the supple flesh gave in under the gentle pressure of his teeth.

Her eyes were bright and full of sensual current when she looked at him again, and the sole power of that expression drew him in again, and again, and again in a continuous series of concluding kisses, brief pecks of lips, because each time he pulled away, he decided he was still not satisfied completely.

"Are you visiting her straight from the airport?" he asked, when at last his desire had been quenched, and he could focus back on the case.

"I've considered it, but I think I'll still go daily dressed… I'll leave that for later," she smiled. "And, I need a hair iron. Most stewardesses have straight hair, so when I appear in the uniform, I need the appropriate hairdo."

"And those?" he somewhat reluctantly took one hand off her waist and prodded at the bag with shower gel and shampoo.

"That's another necessity. I already made the cardinal mistake of going to see Norton when smelling of your products… I covered it up with perfume, but it was reckless anyway," she explained.

"Reckless?" his eyebrows knitted together as he pondered over her apparent hyperbole.

"Yes. It's not a scent that matches Erin Watts' personality, it stands out a little against the background. People pick up those tiny little things, Sherlock, they may not do it consciously, like you do, but they register them somewhere deep in subconscious, and sometimes those things come up, and people call them 'intuition'. If your character is inconsistent, there's a chance people won't trust you," she playfully brushed her fingertips under his chin, teasing the soft, sensitive flesh.

"Devil is the details," Sherlock pensively quoted the popular saying, brushing a thumb up and down her hip. Irene smiled, eyes shining.

"And consequently – so is success."

* * *

Sherlock sat in his chair, legs curled up, and keenly traced and observed every move Irene made, the mirror providing him with excellent surveillance despite her back being turned on him. The process of choosing and carefully composing a disguise was always a field of interest and excitement to him, filled with strategic decisions and preventive thinking, and watching someone as skilled in the art as himself was a combination of study and experience he never could have before.

She was applying her makeup now, and he watched her with rapt attention and scrutiny of details. Irene's manipulations with cosmetics when completing a disguise were always an object of interest to him, since it was an assortment inaccessible to him in his own costumes and camouflages. He appreciated the absolutely conscious level on which she made every single decision in that regard, every shade and line chosen with strategic awareness and purpose, together piecing a coherent end effect. He sometimes wondered what strategies and decisions prompted the makeup she wore during their first meeting. The blood red lipstick, the metallic azure eyeliner – he wondered what conclusions made about him served as a base for those particular choices. It was one of the thoughts he occasionally pursued to save himself from boredom.

Irene spread pale blue eye shadow over her eyelids, and then proceeded to carefully dab her fingers on it, rendering it uneven in some spots.

"I'm coming straight from work and barely had the time to change…" she declared in a slow voice deepened by her concentration, her eyes absolutely focused on the work of her fingers. "And I had a flight to Budapest today… the weather was nice… we just refuelled and flew back."

In a deft and natural move she brushed the knuckle of her right index finger against the outer corner of her eye, dragging the touch towards her temple and thus leaving a faint smudge of her black eyeliner on the route. She lightly rubbed her hand over her hair, adding a few flaws to her until now perfect arrangement into a smooth stewardess bun.

"There," she smirked contently, snapping closed a small eye shadow box, and turned around to face him.

Her eyes were glowing bright with satisfaction and anticipation of a wanted task ahead of her, and combined with her sharp smile they exposed the danger that her intelligence was to her enemies.

"Nice touch with the smudge," he complimented reservedly – perhaps it was somewhat petty of him to be so withdrawn only because she had the case instead of him, but he couldn't help himself.

"Thank you. I'll be back in four hours," she spoke as she passed by him, brushing a hand against his neck and jaw line, her fingertips trailing right to the point of his chin in a pleasurably elusive tease. "Don't follow me, behave yourself, don't play with matches and don't bother Mrs Hudson," she winked at him, slinging the strap of a beige duffel bag over her shoulder, and he rolled his eyes, sinking deeper into his chair with a scowl.

"Remember to look at her sleeves this time," he issued last-minute instructions. "Look for pins, buttons, stains, smudges. And her mouse and keyboard. How many fingers does she use when typing? And her fingernails. And the tips of her shoes. And the sole of her left shoe."

"The last one should be fun to check. Don't worry, dear, I will."

With that, she was out the door. Sherlock listened to her retreating footsteps, counting them to at least minimally deter the onset of boredom, and sighed when with another shut of the door she was out of his hearing range. He sighed, getting up from the chair, and circulated around the room three times in both directions.

The idea of a case accessible to him solely indirectly and cerebrally instead also physically, was new and alien due to the factor it was against his will. Prompts, plans and ideas were filtering through his brain, forming severely incomplete theories, his mind screaming for more data and suspending him in a state of powerless restiveness. The depravation of direct inclusion was akin to a severe withdrawal syndrome, and he suddenly caught himself pressingly rubbing his right hand up and down the flexing point on his inner left arm, where years ago innumerable puncture marks could have been spotted.

His hand jerked away as if burnt, and he stepped back, his breathing hitching into a brief acceleration, before he calmed it by a pacifying technique, preventing himself from a psychological slip into the state of addiction wrestle.

Work. He needed work. Facts, data up for processing.

Much calmer, he produced his phone from his robe pocket, and laid back on the sofa, selecting Mycroft from his contacts and opening a new text message, and smirked as he realised he would try out the recent upgrade his brother wasn't likely to appreciate…

* * *

"There's been a leakage of our Tibetan intelligence to the Chinese – our local informer was caught when trying for the Indian border, from where he was supposed to take off and join other dissidents in the exile."

Mycroft nodded slowly as one of his co-workers introduced the subject of a gathering called in urgent and confidential mode. Six pairs of eyes watched the speaking man over the opened dossiers and notebooks spread on a glass round table, while an ID photograph of the now most likely deceased Tibetan flashed up on a screen.

"When?" asked Mycroft simply in a calm voice.

"Today at nine twenty-three am, GMT."

"And we're only getting the message now?" Mycroft allowed a small tinge of displeasure to be heard in his voice.

"Broadcast problems. And just yesterday at nine pm we've completed our intelligence share with the Americans."

"A little too quick for them to leak something," another associate noted.

"Maybe yes, maybe no. We can't exclude either possibility – especially as we've had experience with them dealing intel under the table."

"We cannot jump to conclusions."

"Christ, Harry, that man is dead and our contact was exposed!"

"A list," Mycroft tapped his finger slowly against the table, cooling the brief tension rise in the room. "Of all people who had access to that intelligence. Including all of us here in this room. We also should send an official request to the Americans to make such a list of their own and grant us access to it."

"They won't agree."

"The primary ownership of the compromised intelligence puts us in charge. We have to look at it very carefully. Wherever is the flaw, the integrity as such is compromised nevertheless. And because we don't know the extent of the damage, it must be our priority."

"_Ahhhh_…"

In the brief silence left after Mycroft's words, the sighing moan rang soft and clear, sending all the men present in the room into an absolute paralysis of surprise over the unfathomable. Seconds ticked painfully in the abrupt silence, as a few pairs of eyes turned to Mycroft, from whose pocket the sound had emanated, absolute consternation and speechlessness prevailing.

Admittedly, Mycroft lost his grip on any sort of logical thinking for one moment of sheerest surprise, and the first thought that came into focus was that of the now absolutely inevitable death of the damnable woman his brother had affiliated with.

"Excuse me," he spoke in his smoothest and calmest voice, reaching into his jacket pocket – the policy of not muting the mobile communicators during meetings had never seemed such a flagrant mistake as it did right now.

_Bored. Send Janda's files, or I will follow Irene to Norton's. - SH_

So it seemed it was his brother who saddled him with the painful text alert, instead of the woman who invented it. Sherlock's sense of humour was definitely escalating in an undesired direction.

He slipped the phone back into his pocket and met the frozen stares of his associates with absolute neutrality.

"I move for a twenty minute break once we've closed this subject… oppositions?" he looked around the room as his co-workers shook heads. "Thank you. Please, continue."

Sherlock must have hacked into his phone via Bluetooth on one of his visits to 221 B, when he was in a close enough radius, there was no other possibility to override the securities he had installed in his personal model… Sherlock had a penchant for mobile phone jokes of dubious amusement (to take for example his phase of the infamous 'Wrong!' texts he sent through the coverage transmitters), and it was another discipline in which he and Adler seemed compatible.

Mummy would be happy to know the advanced IT courses for Sherlock was money well spent.

* * *

Being attractive to someone is always the right balance of resemblances and opposites. Each relationship involves two personalities, therefore each time the blend and balance are different and unique. The key to successful arrangement of the right balance is figuring out what someone likes. What resemblances and what opposites they like and are attracted to, and, correspondingly, which they are deterred by.

Irene enjoyed hunting for those things, details that provided her the password to the vaults of other people's personalities and ultimately – their control of themselves. By learning what they liked and using it one way or another, she could steer them either more or less subtly, depending on her personal choosing. It was a glorious, almost intoxicating sense of power, and she knew Sherlock related to it when it came to speed and expansiveness of thinking – it had the same effect on him.

And she was glad. Because all complexities aside, her natural and true personality was the optimal set of resemblances and opposites that matched Sherlock's own preference, while his was the same to her. Natural state, real face and no disguises – that was the state in which they found each other attractive, the most out of all other people. The chances of such an occurrence seemed astronomically improbable, and yet there it was, so tangible and real that Irene some time ago had stopped being amazed by it.

She was what he liked. He was what she liked.

Good. Such arrangement was perfect and immensely satisfactory.

Now time to use her skills again, and dive into Georgiana Norton's own likings and preferences. She responded to charm, freshness and energy and light, and Irene played those cards freely, naturally and with a smile.

"Thank you very, very much," she laughed, shaking Norton's hand, the lawyer responding with her own grin and laugh of contentment.

"You're welcome. Come on Friday with your brief family history and the psychological assessment from your airline training – then we can start working on our strategy.

"Oh, that's fantastic, thank you once again," Irene got up from the chair, glancing at her watch – one o'clock precisely. Good. She purposefully had chosen 12.30 to be the meeting hour, so that it would be Norton's last before lunchtime. "Oh, you're going too?" she asked with a smiling surprise as she reached the door.

"Yes, out for lunch, I've been here since nine," Norton smiled, shrugging on her jacket.

"Oh, that's tough. I can at least eat when I'm on the job… though I don't appreciate the turbulence when I go for soup in a mug," she giggled (_giggled_! The sacrifices she was making for this case…), Norton giving a small laugh as well. "Eating on the ground is much better, trust me. Though much of my lunches usually are take-out, I can't remember when was the last time I had something normal."

"Well – why don't you join me?" Norton suggested with small hesitation in her smile, and following right down the neat psychological path mapped out for her.

Irene blinked in perfect slight surprise.

"Really? Oh, that's nice… but work at lunch?"

"I don't mind, I often lunch with clients, and you gave me that bracelet…" Norton reminded her with a small smile of fun and bemusement.

"Yes… now that I think of it, it might not necessarily help our case claiming I'm responsible," she chuckled nervously, biting on her lip and looking at Norton with a helpless but charming glance.

"Then come on. I won't sleep peacefully if I don't repay you for it."

Charming Georgiana Norton into accepting the bracelet had been a delightful challenge of small calibre, and Irene downright had to stop herself from smiling deliciously at the amusement. Ducking, prodding, dodging, running ahead… a sparkling choreography of mental sheepherding, and even though the challenge was small, it didn't stop it from being enjoyable.

Georgiana Norton wasn't a pliant, submissive character prone to suggestions (she wouldn't have become a lawyer in such case), but since Irene could bend both Holmes boys (though in two _very_ different ways), she wasn't too high a challenge.

Half-listening to Georgiana Norton's first proposition of a strategy as they walked down the street leading away from the office, she made sure to pointedly look over her shoulder, slowing down her pace for a small, lingering moment, before picking it up.

"What is it?" Norton asked.

"Oh, nothing, I just saw a man I had on a flight from Prague about two weeks ago," she smiled dismissively. "I remembered him, 'cause he had that James Bond air about him, you know – dark glasses, brown combed-back hair, clean shaven, pointy chin, wearing a suit with a tie pin," she quickly sketched a general description of Janda, discreetly slipping in one or two distinguishing characteristics, and while keeping an inattentive demeanour, watched Norton grow slightly alerted. "I sometimes see people I served on a flight, it's a funny feeling that it's a small world," she smiled.

"Do you remember people well?" Norton asked, though the idea of Janda's presence still visibly buzzed in the back of her mind.

"Well, that depends, I smile at one to two hundred people per day at least three times on one flight… I remember some and forget others," she shrugged.

Twenty minutes later they were ensconced in a small restaurant and already eating their food. Norton led the way without hesitation and ordered after having only briefly flipped through the menu – she was coming here frequently then, and since they passed three other restaurants in similar price range on their way, it wasn't out of convenience. Either the food or the atmosphere then, or possibly an acquainted person, but the latter didn't seem likely, since she didn't look searchingly around at all.

She _liked_ this place – so it was a potential mine of clues.

Irene looked around, retaining the casual demeanour while quickly committing details to her memory. The décor was kept in rather bright colours (creamy white, tawny pale yellow, caramel accents), trying in places for a retro touch (typically vintage-inspired sepia photo of Big Ben printed on a metal board and signed 'London' with a '50s-styled flamboyant font, dial phone on the counter, chairs white and with a soft seat). The tables were square (small and medium sizes, plus one cluster of three small tables for a bigger group), spread around the room seemingly at random, creating a slightly more intimate atmosphere.

The food was average but overall tasty – Norton ate fried chicken with a very freshly looking salad (young lettuce, tomato, a few green olives).

Oh – she liked _lightness_. Brightness and small weight. Good.

"Must be exciting – being a stewardess," Norton smiled conversationally.

"Oh, yes, the oxygen mask demonstration is the highlight of my day," Irene rolled her eyes, and Norton chuckled. "It _is_ fun, I wouldn't like it otherwise, but it's also demanding. But I like it all, and I certainly like the travels, seeing new cities."

"I can't imagine having the landscape change outside my window while I'm working," Norton mused with a fascinated smile.

"Yes, that's definitely a good side of the job. And it's never boring – like yours, I think."

"Well, it has its moments, too. I like planning the attack or defence, and I like the small investigations – it's a nice small thrill."

"You investigate?" Irene moved an inch closer.

"A little bit – you know, finding out weak spots of my opponent and their client, looking up secrets they might want to keep… it's all fun, though perhaps I shouldn't think like that," she chuckled, and Irene smiled.

"Looks like you didn't miss your calling."

"And you didn't miss yours either, I can tell they knew what they did when they hired you – you have a very beautiful smile."

A lunch invitation and a compliment. Not too bad, at this rate she should have access to Norton's more classified work areas within two weeks.

"Oh, thanks," she smiled even brighter. "And apparently, I land a mean right hook," she lifted her right fisted hand with a grin, drawing another laughter from Norton. "I know, I don't look it… but I had a martial arts course in my training and I passed top, as you'll read in the file I gave you," she licked the spoon she used to stir sugar into her coffee. "I hope I won't turn out to be boring."

"As much as it might help our case, I don't think that's possible."

* * *

"Janda functions under three other iron-documented aliases – Stanek, Blaha and Vavrek. His father, Martin Moravec, was a Nazi hunter back in the '60s. Janda first came to England in 2003 as part of a collaboration against drug dealers – the French and the Americans were also involved," Sherlock greeted Irene from the sofa where he lay surrounded with papers extracted from a dossier, when she returned at the promised 4 pm. "Mycroft started observing him when a piece of intelligence was leaked to the Americans in 2005, and Janda was the only one outside of Mycroft's associates, who had access to it. It was a rendezvous for smugglers meant to carry the product out toDenmark, and Americans suddenly appeared on the scene and claimed credit for apprehension, their involvement justified with one American being present among the smugglers."

"It will all make a very sexy bedtime story, but hush now," she sat down in his chair, toeing off her shoes and shrugging off the uncomfortable blouse, remaining only in her bra and jeans. "My day was more interesting."

"Oh?"

"Yes," she settled more comfortably in the chair, looking at him with a slow, victorious smile. "I know what she likes..."

With details, she debriefed the sexier Holmes on her progress and observations, including the keyboard, left sole and everything else he asked her for this morning. He listened in a very delicious focus, intense bright blue eyes staying on hers, and she could almost see his brain record every listed fact with infinite precision.

"Oh, that was _good_…" he hummed with a small smirk when, at the end, she recounted her bluff with spotting Janda.

She smirked back, tilting her head.

"I thought you might like it. I'll try to get her on the first-name basis on Friday."

"Good. And make sure-"

His advice was interrupted by the sound of knocking on the door. Casting her a brief look (lingering for a small moment on her upper half), Sherlock made the logical choice of being the one to answer the door, disappearing from her sight for a moment.

On the doorstep stood a person whose face made Sherlock's eyebrows slightly rise, and whose voice caused Irene to instantly flee into the bedroom, remembering to grasp the discarded blouse.

"Mr Sherlock Holmes?"

"Yes…"

"My name is Georgiana Norton… I need your help."

* * *

**I know, I know - the cliffhanger is tacky, but I couldn't help myself. So, things complicate, as usually when Sherlock is involved - Mycroft won't be happy.**

**In the next chapter we have John back :)**

**Also, I came up with two storires that would follow this one - "The Dancing Men" and "The Empty Room", you can read summaries on my profile :) I'm not 100% sure I'll do these stories, but the project is there :)**

**And please review... I really can't do without that. I worked hard on the chapter (while being sick, mind), I'd love to hear what you think about it :)**


	4. There are dinners and Dinners

**I am horribly sorry for the lateness of the update! I hope you guys still remember about this story! I've been very busy lately, and then for the last ten days or so I've been fighting a hugely unattractive writer's block. As a result, I'm not very thrilled with the last piece of this chapter, but I hope it's still readable.**

**To compensate for the humongous delay, a long chapter!**

**Huge thanks to everyone who reviewed, and massive apologies if I didn't reply to some reviews - I've been in a bit of a chaos and lost track of things, sorry!**

**So there you go, enjoy and please review :D**

* * *

"Please, come in."

Sherlock knew better than to worry whether Irene had managed to clear, and without hesitation showed Georgiana Norton inside, taking the opportunity to examine her closer, at last able to compensate for Irene's shortcomings in the field of detailed physical observations. Irene was highly perceptive, of course, and capable of conducting deductions the same way he did, but less skilled in that department than he. Her insightfulness lay in a slightly different area, closely neighbouring to the one of his expertise, thus allowing their methods to complement each other. She was skilled in observing people's behaviours – reading their moods, thoughts and desires and subsequently using the knowledge for even further and deeper running exploration, and having collaborated with her on those few occasions they've had the chance to do so, he had to grudgingly admit she exceeded him in that field.

"Please, sit," he gestured at his own chair, while he sat in Irene's, with a discreet touch of foot brushing her abandoned shoes under the seat. "These aren't my usual consulting hours, but seeing as you're a will and testament lawyer working both private and municipal and have come to me straight from work, with something that's troubled you for a while now, I think it might actually be of interest to me."

While Norton blinked at him in surprise, he glanced at the door to the bedroom left ajar by a thin gap, and briefly settled his gaze on Irene peering through the void. She shook her head with a smirk, pointing downwards with her thumb in a gesture of disappointment – clearly, he failed to impress her.

Which couldn't be said for the lawyer.

"You do live up to your reputation, Mr Holmes," she acknowledged with admiration.

Though she was very much mistaken, as to tell her what he did, he didn't use any observation skills at all, merely recounting a few points of Irene's report from moments before.

"What is your problem then?" he asked, making himself more comfortable, and once more glancing briefly over Norton's shoulder to glimpse Irene in the crack between the door and the frame.

"As you've correctly said, I am a lawyer, I specialise in wills and testaments, hereditary property in general. And lately I've had an… unusual visit," she hesitated while Sherlock fought the reflex to raise his eyebrows. Should this be about Irene, the game would become infinitely more interesting. "A Czech man came to me – he introduced himself as Vaclav Blaha, a diplomat, and asked me if I would be willing to cooperate on a diplomatic investigation into one of my former clients – Mr Albert Hunter. You must understand that this alone made me feel rather strange – his paperwork seemed in order, but I'm not an expert, I wouldn't recognise a good forgery."

"And what's the nature of the investigation?" Sherlock brought his fingertips together, leaning forward, observing Georgiana Norton in rapt attention and absorbing every single detail coming from her mouth, completing the scattered information on the case of Janda. The outcome of the rapid turn of events was proving to be the most beneficial course of action.

"Some of the items bequeathed in Mr Hunter's will are art pieces of the Czech origin, and there is a suspicion that they may have been obtained illegally, and since Mr Hunter is now deceased and his will has been executed, I'm needed in the investigation. It's all very strange, but it does make sense, I suppose, so for the sake of it, I agreed. I granted Mr Blaha access to a selection of documents that weren't under professional secrets protection, and I told him I would try to be of as much use as I can without compromising my professional integrity. I also told everything to my boss, and, having seen the paperwork, he agreed for the cooperation."

"And what caused you to become suspicious enough to come to me?" Sherlock prompted, his eyes shining as he withheld from a sudden and inexplicable urge to share a gaze of fascination with Irene.

"Mr Blaha requested a second meeting, on the same subject. He requested more documents, which I agreed to email to him, but he began probing into my personal relations with Mr Hunter – he asked me if I knew him on a personal level, what could I tell about him as a person. It seemed strange to me, especially since he pressed after I honestly told him that I didn't interact with Mr Hunter on a personal level. And finally, three days ago I glimpsed him outside my house. He seemed to be… observing me," she made an uncertain and disturbed face. "And just today, he may have been following me when I left for lunch."

"May have?"

"I'm not sure, I didn't see him very clearly."

The fact that she did not mention Irene's presence showed a more personal level of emotional investment in the relation, Sherlock mused. If she had viewed Irene solely as a client, she would have mentioned her presence, as it wouldn't make a difference to her, but keeping her concealed meant she viewed her on a more personal level, not wanting to discuss her in front of a stranger, probably due to the uncertainty of the newly forming relation. Deerstalker hat off to Irene for such a fast emotional infiltration.

"So I wanted to ask you to investigate this man for me – tell me if he's any danger, and if he is, then what should I do," Georgiana Norton requested.

Within the timeframe of two seconds, Sherlock analysed the situation and two possible courses of action, and made a choice. He would reveal Janda's identity to Norton, pronounce assumptions as to the purpose of his interest in her person, and thus obtain more information from her, hopefully establishing the exact and actual reason of Janda's involvement with Norton. The right choreography of manipulation and the correct amount of truth and lie would serve to satisfy all sides involved in the transaction.

Except Mycroft.

"As it happens, I know who Mr Vaclav Blaha is," he informed the surprised lawyer. "He is actually a Czech secret service agent by the name of Pavel Janda – Blaha is one of his aliases. It seems that whatever interest he has in you, he uses the case with Hunter as a cover. Do you have any idea why he could be interested in you?" he asked, maintaining a direct and probing eye contact, leaving Norton with no possibility of escape.

The lawyer took a moment to ponder on the matter, and Sherlock kept his eyes shrewdly trained on her face, capturing every message sent by her pensive features. The slight twitch of her eyebrows signalled her deep focus, while her gaze directed to the left and slightly downwards showed her undergoing a process of thorough recounting. Slowly, she shook her head and looked up to meet his eyes again.

"No. I'm sorry, I do not. As entertaining as my work is, I've never been involved in any… _exceptional_ things," she shrugged with an expression of open puzzlement on her face.

"It doesn't have to be anything _exceptional_," he replied. "Anything, any detail that you think might have some connection to Janda, or something that a man like him could be after."

There was a brief yet visible moment of tension passing over her posture, her eyes growing still for a second, pupils shrinking in size, but in the next moment she slowly and deliberately shook her head, looking him straight in the eyes. She shifted her position, clearly uncomfortable, but remaining cool in the face of her own lie.

"No," she claimed. "I don't know about anything that he could be interested in."

Sherlock released a deep sigh, leaning back in his chair and looking down at Norton for a slow moment of withdrawn contemplation.

"Very well, when you decide to tell me everything, please do… Now, as to your question whether Janda is a danger – since I don't know what he is after, I cannot say that for certain. But he is a dangerous man, you should keep that fact in mind. Continue your collaboration with him, but stall him as much as you can, while I try to work out what is it he wants. If he wants another meeting from you, try to postpone it. If you see anything suspicious or feel in danger, let me know," he passed her his card. "Call me as soon as there's a development."

She nodded, taking the card from his hand, and glanced it over.

"I will. Thank you, Mr Holmes."

He watched her leave, and as the door sounded shut, Irene exited his bedroom, her bare feet padding against the carpeted floor as she sauntered towards him in a purposeful step that swayed her hips enticingly. On a less case-related note, he was glad to notice she had not replaced her discarded shirt with any new garment.

Her lips shaped into a sharp, tantalizing smile, while her eyes shone brightly with imbibing excitement of a freshly picked up scent in a thrilling hunt. She slipped onto his lap, drawing a hand over the back of his neck and promptly pulling him into a sensuous kiss, her lips working over his in a blend of hunger and languor. If he had any reservations due to the suddenness of her direct actions, they fell away as the entirety of his focus rushed to the hot sensation of her tongue brushing over his lower lip, and he opened his mouth wide, suddenly hollowed with a slowly rising hunger.

When she pulled away, her gaze met his in a sense of collision, darkened and yet emitting a captivating light that he soaked up in abrupt fascination, recognising the sensations behind the glow as a high of intellectual stimuli, and he shifted his position, leaning closer into her as he followed the pull of her gaze.

"This is so brainy…" she whispered, slipping a hand into his hair, and he grinned briefly, sliding his own hand onto the small of her supple back. The ends of her loose hair brushed and whispered teasingly against his skin, spreading a tingling eagerness and need in his palm, and he moved his hand up her spine, collecting the sensation of her smooth skin and alluring shape mingled with the chaos of her tangled hair that somehow felt wild in a raw, primal sense.

Her hand buried itself into his hair, raking through the curls with a rich sensation of avarice and extremely stirring rapacity, causing him to place both hands on her sides, at the base of her ribcage, and shift her forward towards him, till her weight pressed magnificently against him in full. The rush of deductions and strategies left him in a state of excitement and increased susceptibility, and the addition of physical stimulation from an equally cerebrally enticed Irene sent his pulse into a rapid elevation.

"We have to plan this most carefully," she purred, her hand retracing its course in reverse, from his occipital bone, raising all the hairs along the way till vaguely scratching at the apex of his cranium, shedding instant sparks.

"Janda is looking for something that Norton has," he responded, his voice carried on a flow of laboured breathing as his fingertips brushed over the rim of her bra clasp. "And she suspects what it is, but doesn't want to tell me."

"Which means it's partially personal to her, but not compromising her professional integrity, since she's sensitive on that point," Irene's own breath washed over his lips in a soft puff of heat, which triggered an impulsive desire that he followed, pressing a needy kiss against her mouth.

"But we're not completely sure that what she has in mind is indeed what Janda is after," he pointed out as he pulled away, trailing one hand up her spine till reaching the base of her head and wound the hand into the lush thickness of her unruly waves, the cool texture inexplicably arousing as it slipped and tangled over the sensitive flesh in between his fingers.

"Janda keeps requesting papers from her," she breathed. "He's accustoming her to an idea that he's investigating her," her eyes glowed with a triumph that hitched his breathing into a sudden gasp of air. "He's infiltrating, obscuring the boundaries…" she talked in a slightly deepened voice, her own breathing quickened as she trailed the fingertips of her free hand along the hem of his shirt collar. "He wants more access to her papers."

"He was outside her house," Sherlock ploughed on along a clear, straight track, and the brush of his shirt's fabric against his neck as Irene deftly undid a button with one hand, catalysed him onto a higher speed. "He's conducting a reconnaissance, which suggests that whatever he wants is in her house…"

"Which means that she is most likely right when thinking it's the thing she didn't tell you about," Irene finished his sentence with a satisfied smile, her eyes again shining. The voiced conclusion of his own deduction was like a stolen breath of air, only instead of strangling him, it triggered an upsurge of incandescence, and his mind was crossed with an uncharacteristically romantic though that if there was such a thing as a solely telepathic kiss, this would be the exact feeling of it.

Irene's right hand left his hair, injecting his entire system with a sudden onslaught of strangely pleasing insatiability, and joined the other in undoing the buttons of his shirt, the actions deliberately slow.

"So we can use this to our advantage…" her smile was now positively predatory, stirring an arousing effect on him along with the sense of her words. "One by one, release information about Janda, increase her focus on the subject…"

"So that she eventually betrays something around you," it was his turn to hungrily complete her deduction, staring ravenously into her eyes as she carried on undoing his shirt.

She pushed the garment off his shoulders, running her hands down his pectoral muscles and scraping her nails lightly over his midriff, wrenching a quiet moan from him as his skin was assailed with a flood of sensory pleasure. Irene smiled, leaning in to brush a kiss over his collarbone, and he breathed deeply, his hands grasping at her hips tenaciously.

When she pulled away, he sighed, following her motion to keep them close to each other. Her chest was rising and falling in smooth heaves of her laboured breathing, and her heated skin was exuding an intoxicating fragrance that drew him in, overwhelmed with maddeningly unspecified desire.

Irene gasped as she felt his mouth close over a spot on her pulse line, and leaning her head back in desire of fuller sensations, she ran her hands over his exposed shoulder, taking in the feeling of his hot skin. The combination of brainwork and physical foreplay was a lightheaded pleasure, and she could hardly draw a breath for a moment as Sherlock continued his ministrations on her neck.

"It's in her house," she breathed, mildly incoherent, searching out his eyes as he pulled away, and the contact with his darkened gaze cleared her brain while also arousing her body.

"So we have to get access to it, and an opportunity to search it alone," his voice was a deep drawl, igniting a recognition in her, a bright deduction that lit up her mind.

"The keys," she gasped in elucidation, feeling a brief tremble run across her body at the rapid dilation of his pupils as he instantly understood her idea, the new blackness of his gaze leaving her fascinated, tensed in a taut anticipation of the reaction his eyes promised her.

She drew in a deep breath as he gripped her strongly above the dip of her waist, lifting her as he rose from the chair, and promptly dipping her, lowering onto the rug, the motion a one tantalizing swing of up and down, inverting her sense of balance for a dazzling moment of intense pleasure that came both from her mind and body, and she grasped onto his shoulders, pulling him atop herself as she lay on the floor.

He shrugged off his shirt completely, and she took the delight of running her hands along his spine, across the slim plane of his back, making sure to caress that sensitive spot below his left shoulder blade that brought him so much pleasure. In response, he knelt up, lifting her along, and worked deftly on the mechanism of her bra clasp.

The hunger in his eyes was arousing as he lowered her back onto the ground, and she found a strange, searing pleasure in consenting to this submission. But with Sherlock, everything was newfound, every action of pleasure she knew was different, compellingly new, rediscovered through the prism of _Sherlock_. The relation that joined her with him emotionally and mentally was completely different to any other she ever had in her life, and it resulted in differences becoming also physical. It was beautiful. She was not ashamed of the word, since after a long search she failed to find a more sophisticated synonym – perhaps because the emotion that bound her to him was simple and extremely strong. And because of that, it was the most exceptional one of all, to her.

She watched him as he leaned on his elbows and dipped his head over her collarbone, his black hair tickling her skin in an unintended tingling prelude to pleasure, and she gasped as he laid an open, lush kiss over her breast, his mouth hot on her sensitive flesh. The pleasure was slow and languorous, his kiss lazy and soon ending as he lifted his head slightly, lips leaving her nipple before taking it in again. He repeated the action several times, and she sighed, her body caught in a state between tension and liquidation, and she buried her hand in his hair. She knew he enjoyed it thoroughly when she raked through his hair, the pleasure very clearly both soft and erotic to him, and currently she gratified him, using all of her remaining strategic consciousness to match the slow pleasure he gave her with the one she provided for him, letting her hands roam through his rich curls.

Having subsequently taken care of her other breast as well, and calling a hot flush onto her face as she breathed faster and faster, he moved down her chest, to the apex of her ribcage, down her stomach, marking the trail with hot, wet kisses in an unhurried pace that left her between intoxicated bliss and impatience. As he trailed lower, pressure was growing inside her, adding to her anxiety, and she bit on her lower lip as his teeth scraped teasingly over the hem of her jeans.

Casting her a bold look that always was so surprisingly and absolutely sexy on him, he rose off his elbows and began undoing the button of her jeans.

"There's one problem though," she reminded him in a huff of hot breath as she arched slightly, lifting her hips so as to enable him to push the trousers down her thighs, and she smiled at the entranced expression with which his now darkened blue eyes traced her supple movements.

"Hmm…?" the fact that the brilliant Sherlock Holmes was not entirely focused, flattered her immensely.

"Your brother has forbidden you to get involved…" she teased him in a purr as she now lifted her legs, Sherlock tugging the coarse fabric off and replacing it with sensual smoothness of his touch, a mixture of desire and worship.

There was a gleam in his eyes as he looked into hers, hooking a thumb over the hem of her silk lace briefs, and his pupils dilated with again that hungry desire. His voice was a raspy, deep rumble spiced with a faint smirk.

"Then I guess I'll have to misbehave."

* * *

The first thing that John noticed when he invited himself into the living room of 221 B on late Wednesday evening, was that the table had been mostly cleared, two laptops stacked one on top of the other at the end of the table, while the middle was entirely occupied by two game boards bound together side-to-side with some duct tape. On a closer look, they turned out to be boards for Cluedo and the new, upgraded version of Cluedo. On and around them were scattered cards, figurines (he was sure Irene was the Red lady) and other pieces of both games, along with two glasses of wine and one (figures…) plate with some biscuit crumbs left on the surface.

"What's this?" he asked, prodding the two united boards with a finger as Sherlock strolled into the room.

"Don't touch. It's the Cluedo master version," replied the detective with complete seriousness that made John groan. Sherlock and Irene having a brainwork competition over their own combination of two Cluedo games – he wouldn't want to be caught in the middle of _that_.

Or _that_, he thought, as he caught the sight of some black lace knickers landed under the chair near the mantelpiece. And just when Mrs Hudson bought the new rug… _Ugh,_ _new thought, new thought…!_

"Not using the little notebooks?" he asked, as he again looked at the game spread on the table.

"No," there's the confused _You're an idiot_ look. "Why would we?"

"Right, sure, of course… So," he looked around after The Woman. "Where's Irene?"

"Out," Sherlock replied succinctly. "She went for a walk."

"You didn't go with her?"

"Seeing as I'm here, obviously no, I did not," Sherlock sprinkled a little bit of his sarcasm and dropped into a chair. "I didn't want to."

"Right, yeah… Sometimes I forget you're not a usual couple…"

Sherlock looked up at him with clear, puzzled eyes and a small frown.

"We're not a couple."

"Right…" John sat in the opposite chair, relaxing into a pleasant feeling of familiarity of the days when he would be the one to put up with Sherlock seven days a week.

Not much changed – he visited often, almost every day, though admittedly slightly less often when Irene would be staying at Baker Street. It wasn't that he disliked her – no, he actually never had any particular aversion from her, only a sense of fear and a very strong concern caused by the destructive effect she was capable of having on Sherlock. Then, after both high-cheekboned geniuses turned out to be alive, he'd gotten to know her slightly better. The sense of fascination he always had towards her (before her, he'd never seen someone match Sherlock so completely in a sane way, unlike Moriarty) helped him, probably, to get slightly past some of the strange feelings he had about her. She certainly was sharp and made her own terms, but getting to know her better through her _relationship_ (again, the biggest lexical stretch ever…) with Sherlock, his ideas about her shifted, and he started to actually like her. She was tremendously intelligent, but having spent so much time with Sherlock he was fairly used to being mentally outgunned, and it wasn't a bother to him. She was actually… _fun_, he could say. He couldn't pinpoint what it was exactly about her that he liked, but he really did so, and enjoyed her company, along with how she made him uncomfortable in a strangely amusing way. Overall, she was a pleasant and fascinating person to be around when one didn't have her as an enemy.

Not much changed, he thought again as he looked around. The living room still looked the same as ever – warm, cluttered with scattered things, smelling of tea, books and contents of a chemistry set. Even the bloody wall still looked the same – with bullet holes and smiling sprayed-on face. It was soothing, entering this room and seeing it so very overfilled with Sherlock's living, breathing presence again, felt like coming home, no matter how many times he repeated the experience. It didn't change the fact that his new flat with Mary also was home, and he didn't think about how strange and how normal it was – he wasn't Sherlock to overanalyse everything. Some things were just meant to be felt and enjoyed, not taken apart for definitions.

Even Sherlock didn't change. It was almost impossible, seeing as the change in his life – Irene – was so tremendous and almost obliterating to all of his previous lifestyle. But no, there was no obliteration, he was the same, _the freaking same_! His demeanour didn't change, the only thing that did change, was that Sherlock Holmes apparently discovered a whole new set of emotions (very intense, passionate emotions), but only for the one person who awoke them, only for Irene. And maybe that was why he still was the same – because he didn't have to change in order to feel those things – he simply had to meet someone as impossible and extraordinary as himself, in order to be able to have those feelings.

John smiled, looking at his best friend with a sudden (and frankly a little embarrassing) upsurge of fondness. There he was, curled up in his chair like a kid, his clever brain whirling away into some brilliant deductions that John would never be able to follow, and obviously inches away from throwing a sulking fit over not being on a case.

Speaking of which…

"So how's the case going?" John asked, reaching for a box of chocolate truffles left on the table – a few still rolled around on the bottom, so he treated himself to one.

"Fine. You'll like it, there was a twist. Just – don't write about it yet, we can't risk Janda finding out we're after him…"

"Honestly, Sherlock, I'm not _that_ big of an idiot…" John sighed.

"Hmm, one can never be too careful."

The door opened and slammed, John turning to glimpse Irene strolling into the room and looking like an advertisement of high-class taste as always, this time dressed in a smart, cream white coat tied tight around her slim waist. John may not have been an expert in fashion industry, but even to his inexperienced eye the attire seemed ruinously expensive. He sometimes wondered where she kept getting her money from – she apparently had some high paid job in advertising, but the absolute vagueness with which she and Sherlock mentioned the subject whenever it came up, suggested she was up to a great deal more in her spare time.

"You should be sorry you didn't tag along," she crooned with a smile, shrugging off the coat and revealing an equally classy black dress underneath. "I just saw the most gorgeously orchestrated pick-pocketing stunt. Five hustlers, two victims, great efficiency, no one noticed anything. Hello, John."

"Hi. How's the case going?"

"Very well, thank you," Irene smiled with intense satisfaction as she strode across the room, her eyes exchanging one of those sparks with Sherlock that always confused John a little, because he didn't know what exactly this exchange referred to. "We've just had a very interesting breakthrough, as it happens," she purred with a smirk, sitting down on the sofa and relaxing against the backrest, while still managing to look incredibly classy and debonair and everything. He had no idea how she did that, especially since there always was this sharpness of _misbehaving_ about her.

"Yeah, he said that too, what's the breakthrough?" John asked, since frankly, despite everything, he usually had more chances finding out something from Irene rather than Sherlock, as ridiculous as that sounded. Sherlock always was a Scrooge about revealing his plans and deductions, and ever since he met Irene he became even more unbearable there, probably because somehow either she or he (or both of them, for God's sake…) got off on that. Communication without words and all that jazz.

"Miss Norton felt in need of professional help and consulted world's only consulting detective," Irene Adler downright _purred_ from her comfortable spot on the sofa. "Darling Sherlock promised to deliver her some intelligence on Janda."

"Wow," John nodded in acknowledgement. "That… hmm, that's a bit… What did Mycroft say?"

"What _did_ he have to say?" Sherlock snarled perhaps somewhat like a grumpy cat, snatching his violin and beginning to polish the wood with a cloth. John didn't try to hide a small smile. Yes, he did not change at all… and it was good.

"Let's just say what Mycroft doesn't know, doesn't hurt him," Irene presented her predatory smile that revealed a glimpse of her teeth as she brought her red-nailed fingertips together in a perfect mockery of Sherlock's trademark gesture.

"Riiight…" John nodded, leaning back in his chair. "I get it. Well, this should be fun. Especially the part where it all backfires on you lot."

"Why would it _backfire_?" Sherlock spat out the 'b'.

"Well, Mycroft's not stupid, is he?" John pointed out. "He's gonna find out sooner or later. Annnd… he's not gonna be happy about that."

"And how exactly does that _backfire_?" Sherlock went on making a face. "Whether he finds out or not, won't affect our plans, things could only backfire if something we did due to those plans turned against us solely in terms of the case as such. That would be consistent with the definition of _backfiring_."

He must have lost his ass to Irene in Cluedo, going by the furious sulk and bigger than usually obnoxious nitpicking on details. He tended to lash out on people over definitions when he was in a bad mood, and that would also explain his refusal to go for a walk with Irene – he may have claimed he wasn't in a _relationship_, but in all truth Sherlock was completely besotted (in his own style, of course).

"Right," John said slowly again, deciding not to poke the bear any further. Taking his animal analogies to the next level, he thought Irene very much resembled a black panther – relaxed leisurely with a contented smile on her sharp red lips, her eyes bright and spicy with a gleam.

Yes, those two were very well suited for each other. Equally intelligent, superior to everyone else, smug, unpredictable, unbearable and dangerous.

And he still wondered what exactly was it that was wrong with him, that caused him to like them both.

* * *

"Wear something dark and more washable than a suit, dear," Irene instructed as she arranged a selection of makeup cosmetics on the tabletop near the mirror in the living room. With inattentiveness that proved her deliberateness she placed some of them on the top of his desk as it stood nearby, and Sherlock didn't say a word to that, side-stepping her subtle provocation in the usual rhythm of their taut dance.

Nine days since the unexpected twist of action, they found themselves finally ready to obtain the keys to Norton's flat, grasping eagerly at the first opportunity that came along. Irene had managed to perhaps not so much seduce as certainly _attract_ the lawyer, and Erin started dating Georgiana two days ago. Tonight she was invited over to the barrister's house, which provided the comfortably secure opportunity to obtain the keys, in order to return to the house the next day, when Norton would be at work.

John had repeatedly gnawed at the subject of Irene feigning a form of relationship with the lawyer, continuously questioning Sherlock whether he was bothered by it. No form or amount of assurances given to him seemed to entice him to abandon the subject, and Sherlock lost confidence in his ability to get through to his best friend the message that he was indifferent to the arrangement. It did not bother him the slightest, a fact that John seemed incapable of accepting, expressing it by disbelieving, hesitating looks and rephrased, repeated questions.

"It takes twenty minutes – so let's assume half an hour to be safe. Fifteen minutes to get there, and the same for return. So an hour in total," he informed after a pensive moment.

"Don't you worry, dear, I can hold her down for an hour," Irene deftly slipped her earrings into place (silver hoops, matching the thin, simple bracelet on her wrist). "We're having dinner."

Something jammed severely in Sherlock's brain, triggering a sudden reaction of mixed and complex emotional responses, his brain blocked on her last word.

"_What_?" he uttered in a clipped drawl, frowning slightly as he looked at her with alarmed puzzlement.

She turned around and faced him, also briefly confused, before a spark ignited in her eyes, spreading a change into light smile and amusement onto her entire face.

"Evening meal, darling. Nutrition," she explained, only half biting back the mocking smirk, but not even that small effort helped secure his slightly battered dignity.

"Oh," he murmured responsively, settling back into relaxation in his chair. Irene cooed and made a teasing joke about dinners and desserts, to which he only rolled his eyes, letting her know he was not in a playful mood as of this evening.

Irene gathered a few items into a purse, pressed a mockingly tender kiss into his forehead, and was gone, due to the plan which also included him following her in approximately fifteen minutes.

Still dwelling on the scathingly embarrassing slip of his mind, Sherlock curled up his legs and rested his chin on his knees, delving into the matter with methodical analysis. It was a soothingly familiar rite of passage he employed in absolute majority of his existence to reveal the true nature of things, and he derived from its reassuring success rate when tackling a problem that was within him, instead the world around him. Examining the internal instead the external was harder, and he strived for the unbiased view of himself in order to best remove any hindrances his own self could have produced – but when it came to emotions, he found it much harder. Still, the method of steady analysis was the closest to him, securing him via a conviction of successfulness that had come from his triumphs in the work field.

_Dinner_. It was only a moment ago that he realised the actual extent of the impact Irene had on him – cerebrally and emotionally speaking (physically as well, but physicality wasn't an area of concern at this very moment). It was so strong that he'd progressed to viewing the word _dinner_ figuratively instead of literally, its primary meaning became to him the euphemism that Irene had created. The euphemism was now the chief meaning of the word, instead of the conventional concept of an evening meal.

It was an occurrence that just a few months ago would have disturbed him, if not terrified. It was a sign of his emotional perception affecting his brainwork, colouring and shifting his factual observation. But did it terrify him now? He pondered for a moment, examining his own feelings. No, it was disturbing, but only because he _wasn't terrified_ – that was what disturbed him, not the occurrence alone, but the fact that he actually wasn't uneasy about it.

What did cause him uneasiness (terror, even, he whispered to himself in the very core of his mind) was the projected concept of Irene engaged in a sexual intercourse with someone other than himself. His abrupt discomfort was not the typical and dull brand of shock over something understood in the concept of mundane 'cheating', but something else. It was a reaction to the idea of something that would disrupt the validity of their relationship, and perhaps tinged ever so slightly with primal, instinctive possessiveness.

One of the discoveries he'd made about himself since the expansion of his 'self' due to new areas acquired thanks to his relationship with Irene (desire, sex, completion, communication, etcetera), was that he was strictly and entirely a monogamist. In all types of interpersonal relations. Without changes or apostasies, he had one best friend (John, first and last), one ultimate enemy (Moriarty, first and last), one caregiver (Mrs Hudson) and one Woman (_her_, first and only). And one brother, but that was more of a biological fact than anything else, since there was only him and Mycroft.

Being a monogamist (which was more caused by his very narrow tolerance span than by any cognitive resolutions), he never even approached the subject of sharing with someone else what he shared with Irene. It was such abstract a concept that it didn't even appear in his mind, it was unthinkable to him in all possible areas of the idea. And since it was literally unthinkable, he never did _think_ about it.

He never pondered on the subject of his absolute fidelity to Irene (and on the fact that she returned it to him fully). He comprehended it in verbally imprecise terms, but emotionally strong certainties. It was almost a dogmatic fact for them both, since the very essence of their relationship was tantamount to fidelity and exclusivity. The relationship itself was only possible because for both of them there was no other person like one another. She was the only one with whom he could experience the completion of himself, offering himself to her in absolute fullness of all that comprised his existence, and receive the same from her in return. She matched him intellectually, competed with him physically and liberated him emotionally.

The conclusion was sole and inevitable: he was completely and irrevocably in love with her.

It was a realisation that he'd had for some time now, not expressed in words but very much present in his subconscious. He was aware of that fact, having concluded it based on months of involvement with her, but if he were to pinpoint the actual moment of realisation – an emotion rather than cognitive recognition – he'd have to say it was shortly after the first time they had sex. Because on that night all three dimensions of his existence (physical, cerebral and emotional) merged together in absolute equality, and by committing to that act with her, he at least subconsciously recognised the strength of his feelings for her and the effect she had on him.

Now putting his realisation into words wasn't a shock, but it also furthered the depth of that said realisation, and he found himself in harmony with it.

Somewhat satisfied with the progress of his analysis and somewhat miffed with the lack of any goal he could achieve through it, he looked at the clock – he should be leaving in eight minutes. He slid off the chair and with the sensation of newly grounded conclusion still strumming in his mind, he padded towards the bedroom to follow Irene's reasonable instructions and search for an attire comfortable for sneaking around the shrubs and bushes only three hours and fifty-two minutes after heavy rain.

* * *

"Great place," Irene grinned brightly as she strolled into the living room, following Georgiana as they concluded the scenic tour around the facility. "Suits you so nicely. It's so much like you, I mean."

It was an honest statement – Norton's share of the terrace house was arranged in harmony with what she liked – lightness. Light colours (pale honey, sand, hints of creamy white and delicate bright green, pale blue bathroom), most furniture was pine, the arrangement combined brightness with cosiness. The living room wasn't very big, but the colour of the walls helped increase the space, and the windows overlooked the south-east – which meant plenty of light during the day. There was no carpet (pine wood floor, very cared for and glistening), and Irene padded barefoot curiously across towards the table (simple yet light, something from the IKEA assortment, most likely), looking around.

The idea of first visit to the house gave her an ideal pretext for blatant looking around, which she intended to milk for all it was worth, with a smile and a hint of wide-eyed curiosity. She very quickly had realised that a mild touch of interest and inquisitiveness very much appealed to Norton, and she put on the light air of it absolutely effortlessly. Taking off her shoes and walking around barefoot had been another small but precise manipulation – it increased the feeling of familiarity while also hinting at subconscious associations with brightness and carelessness of being at the beach or other relaxing place. She almost wished Sherlock was here with his love for details – she did so enjoy displaying her arsenal of detail tricks, as it was the field where she definitely was ahead of him. How else did he think she fooled him into thinking she was dead?

"Thank you," Georgiana smiled, approaching the table and taking a bottle of white wine from the nearby stand, and busied herself with the ceremony of opening and pouring to two glasses. "What's your place like?"

Shamefully, the first image triggered by the question, was 221 B Baker street. It was a reflex that almost mortified her for some reason, suspending her for a short moment in surprise at her own mind's reaction to the question, and she carefully snipped away the mental thread, determined not to ponder on that now. It was logical, because Sherlock and his address were a place where she, in the end, kept returning, but she didn't (and wasn't willing to) think of it as 'hers'.

She decided to blame the association on having just thought about him, as well as expecting his arrival sometime soon.

"What, do you think my place is like me, too?" she asked instead with impeccable reflex and a small, playful smile, taking a glass from Georgiana's hand.

"I think so," Norton nodded.

"Well, why don't you guess, then?" Irene smiled, sitting down at the table and toying with the glass as she cocked her head to side, observing the lawyer with a pleasant face and shining eyes.

"Hmm, is it a flat?"

"Yes."

"Okay… there you go, I pegged you as a flat-having person. Tall building?"

"No, just three stories."

"Okay… has it got some sort of backyard or a garden?"

"Yes, a small one."

"Centre of London?"

"Yup."

This was honestly almost too easy, and she leaned back, enjoying the game. Instead of stringing together a description (which she was more than capable of doing, mind), she allowed Georgiana Norton to come up with ideas, which she simply confirmed or denied, depending on what she felt went more with the character of Erin Watts. Though she had to be careful not to incorporate herself too much into that disguise (a flat in not a tall building, centre of London… again, she fought a confused frown at the reason for associating 221 B with herself).

"And you've probably always got a suitcase or two in it, ready for flight, or just coming back from one," Georgiana was smiling with a mixture of fondness and fascination, and Irene nodded, returning the smile with a touch of dreaminess.

"Yes… and crap, a way past-expiration carton of milk in my fridge," she groaned in a manner of recollection, causing Norton to laugh. "But anyway, you can stop guessing, cause there's not much more – my flat is absolute shambles right now, I'm redoing it and it's a nightmare. Though I hope you'll be my first guest when I finish," she added with a smile, making a deeper and colouring her direct eye contact with a small hint of furtiveness.

Georgiana smiled, biting on her lip.

"I'd love to."

"Well, then let's hope I finish it soon."

"With the money from your uncle, I bet you will," Georgiana grinned. "Now I've got even more reasons to win this case for us."

"Cheers, then," Irene grinned, raising her glass, and Norton chinked hers against it in a toast.

"Cheers."

The wine was smooth, barely 10%, she reckoned. Not really her type, a touch too pallid in taste – she liked things with more character – but not a bad glass of drink either.

"Hungry?" asked Georgiana, giving Irene a legitimate reason to look at her wristwatch. She didn't normally wear watches, but she reckoned it would go well with Erin, and she checked the time in a brief but pensive glance.

"A bit, yeah," she smiled. Sherlock should have been here for about ten minutes by now – time to execute the small and, frankly, simple plan. Very much so, in comparison to some games that she and Sherlock had gotten up to, together or respectively, in the past.

"Good, so I'll start the dinner," Georgiana smiled, taking her wine glass along to the kitchen.

"Need any help?" Irene asked, rising from the chair.

"No, no, I'm fine for now. Hope you like lightly fried chicken."

"Love it. You know, I have a feeling you might regret feeding me," Irene grinned, following her to the kitchen and wrapping her arms around Georgiana's waist as she stood behind her, grinning girlishly.

"Why?"

"Because I'm fairly sure I'll end up abusing your good nature."

"Be my guest. I could make you lunch when you come back from your Sunday morning Budapest flights," Norton chuckled.

Irene let her go, balancing out the moment perfectly, leaving a brief kiss on the lawyer's cheek.

"A wonderful imposition on you. Sure you don't need any help?" she asked again.

"No, I'm fine, it's a one person job, really."

"Fine. I'm just going to pop out to the bathroom for a bit, okay?" she retreated out of the kitchen just when Norton busied herself with setting up the frying pan and thus being most prone to inattentiveness.

"You remember where it is, right?"

"Mhm," she made her way out of the living room and across the small hallway, where she quietly fished the keys out of a thick crackle glass bowl set up near the coat stand. The metal didn't even chink in her fingers as she lifted it in a practiced motion, and she headed towards the bathroom, making a small noise as she opened the door and closed it without entering, having made sure from the kitchen noises that she didn't stand a risk of being followed.

With the bathroom light prudently switched on before she closed the door, she passed by to the next room – the guest bedroom. Earlier, when taking a tour of the house, she noticed this room was arranged in a style that slightly differed from the overall design (blue walls, more clustered layout of furniture, more intense colours) but had some things in common with it, and she quickly deduced it must have been occupied by Georgiana's sister, Hazel, back in the day when the two had shared the house.

Norton spoke of her sister often and warmly – they had had a close childhood and adolescence, and in their early adulthood stayed together as well. Now Hazel apparently had moved to Manchester with her boyfriend to whom she recently got engaged, but the two sisters stayed extremely close. Which would explain why the guest bedroom was kept pretty much in the style it must have had when being Hazel's room.

Irene moved quietly in the darkness, heading towards the rectangle of vague light, which was the window, minding her precise footsteps so as not to cause any sounds. Gritting her teeth in helplessness, she twisted the handle of the window, every single muscle of her body tensing in violent protest at the noise, and almost angrily pulled the wing open. The cool, humid air of the night breathed against her face as she leaned out, settling on her skin and flowing refreshingly into her lungs. Silence, underlined with the remote sound of cars humming down the London streets, rang in her ears as she listened intently for any signs of Sherlock's presence, but collected no results, unlike their previously settled agreement.

"Sherlock!" she hissed out with a small flicker of fury. "Sherlock!"

There was a rustle in a dark, nearby patch of shrubs, but nothing followed, and as behind her Irene heard the vague kitchen sounds become slightly quieter, she lost her patience and tossed the keys ahead into the night, leaving the detective with the fun task of finding them in wet grass. After all, he complained about not having a bigger challenge in the course of this case.

The keys flung and hit something with a dull thump, a muffled groan ringing out in the silence and calling a brief smirk of satisfaction onto her face. Frankly, she hoped he saw it.

Quickly and quietly, she closed the window, but only let it rest in the frame, not turning the knob, as she would be opening it again in an hour, to take the keys back inside and redeposit them into the bowl. She slipped into the bathroom again, turned on the faucet briefly and made sure to wet the soap and dry her hands on the towel before heading back to the living room.

It was a simple and effective plan. Sherlock knew a locksmith located roughly fifteen minutes away from Norton's house. Having just gotten the keys, he was to take them there and have duplicates made, which would take approximately twenty minutes. Thanks to Sherlock's acquaintance with the locksmith, they wouldn't have to also provide the codes that came with keys of this type, and without which the locksmiths weren't authorised to make copies. In an hour Sherlock was supposed to return the original keys so she could put them back, while tomorrow, or at any other nearest opportunity, they would return to the house while Norton was out and search it freely for whatever Janda was after.

In accordance with that plan, Irene had already surveyed the house under the angle of hiding places, and presently was looking around the living room with the demeanour of a curious guest. The sofa had signs of frequent use, a person laying on it in the same position – she wasn't sure and would need Sherlock's expert eye to confirm it, but she'd say it was a position half-sitting and half-laying, back against the armrest. The padding was creamy white, and against this colour she could see a smudge of darker shade left by frequent brushing over the rim of the sofa. Sherlock would know what to make of that, but she had her own fairly correct suspicions – Norton was frequently reaching under the sofa while laying on it. Whatever was underneath, was personal and could prove to be a valuable clue.

But what caught her attention the most, was the only painting in the room. It was a portrait of two girls, clearly Georgiana and her sister, painted in a somewhat impressionistic style and signed by a name that didn't connect to any market value whatsoever – family friend then. The frame was simple and narrow, and on the wall, beside the left bottom corner, was a cluster of smudges accumulated there throughout a long period of time. The stain of vague smudges was composed of small amounts of dirt left on the wall by fingers brushing against it in a motion that very much corresponded with opening something.

A safe behind the painting. And since the painting was a highly personal thing to her, the code to the safe would also be personal. She remembered this line of thinking all too well, though in her own case, it was also her love for puns that prompted the idea. Sherlock and his ego both liked to imagine she did it solely out of sentiment, and while that crushing part was humiliatingly true, she also did it out of another form of sentiment – her sentiment for puns, if one could put it that way. Though largely, Sherlock and his ego were right – soon after setting up the passcode, she was so Sherlocked she could hardly breathe. The sheer thrill of the game and the absolute fascination at meeting at last her equal, flamed inside her, forging a sentiment. Which, frankly, she no longer saw as a liability.

Very good – the safe, the sofa and Hazel's room, top three locations to search as soon as they can. Tomorrow should be an eventful day indeed…

* * *

**I hope you enjoyed :) Once again, I apologise for the lateness, I'll try to post the next chapter sooner :)**

**And in that said next chapter - Mycroft gets suspicious, safe gets gutted out and Sherlock gets insecure.**

**Reviews = petrol. Story = car. I believe we all know what I'm trying to say here :P**


	5. SHER

**Huge thanks to all the reviewers for your continued support! I'm very happy you remember and still like this fic :D**

**I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but some things in it just had to be tackled. I think I still have some residual writer's block, so forgive me if anything sucks in this chapter :P**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Mycroft arched his eyebrows in a mixture of surprised contemplation and inquisitiveness as he stepped inside the living room of 221 B early in the morning. The younger Holmes was ensconced in his usual chair, laptop appropriately on his lap, eyes on the screen as his fingers tapped over the keyboard, bestowing upon the world some new elements of his wonderful knowledge and discoveries. He looked absolutely usual and detached from anything even slightly abnormal, which made a somewhat garish contrast to the flaring red bruise topped with a small cut that bloomed on his forehead.

At the table, Irene was unhurriedly eating her breakfast of jam toast and half a pear while reading a newspaper, and Mycroft glanced at her comparatively for a moment, before transferring his gaze back to Sherlock.

"Dare I ask?" he questioned in a mockingly soft tone, raising his eyebrows.

Sherlock looked up, bright blue eyes clear, slightly narrowed and innocent like a child's, and Mycroft pointed his umbrella at his brother's forehead by way of explanation.

"I hit my head opening a cupboard."

When his brother concocted such absolutely ridiculous lies it was because he wanted to annoy him, and Mycroft had to admit he was doing a good job at it. He winced with displeasure, but subsequently let the subject lie.

"Listen to this, dear," Irene Adler spoke from her spot at the table, her eyes tracing the lines of some advert with mocking interest and a teasing spark – an expression that bordered on giving Mycroft some indigestion, since he had had it levelled that particular kind of gaze on himself, and those occasions counted among the least pleasant moments of his life. "Lady Worthington's champion French Poodle has gone missing from the house yesterday. All doors and windows locked. This sounds right up your alley," she twisted her body, leaning slightly sideways as she faced his brother with an absolutely merciless expression of patronising. "This should keep you busy till I come back…"

Sherlock retaliated with a burning glare that was meant to intimidate most people, but the damnable woman his brother seemed to have chosen to become _smitten with_, was decidedly not most people. Indeed, unlike most people she was not fazed even the slightest, and instead she playfully nibbled on the remaining piece of her toast, and returned to her newspaper.

"I understand you're going to search Georgiana Norton's house today?" Mycroft turned to her. She lifted her head from over the newspaper and met his eyes with unpleasant directness enhanced with a small smile in the corners of her sharp lips, and nodded. "How did you get her keys copied?" he asked.

The woman only smiled slightly further, her eyes staying on his with a playfulness underlined with challenge.

"I'm very resourceful."

However true that statement was (he had been at the receiving end of her resourcefulness), it sounded just about as honestly and explanatory as Sherlock's cupboard encounter. Mycroft winced again, readjusting his hold over the handle of his umbrella.

"Plant this in her house," with his other hand, he reached to his jacket pocket and produced a small bug. "We can't take any chances," he placed the miniature device on the table near the half emptied glass of orange juice.

"Mr Holmes, do I detect lack of trust in my abilities?" she cooed, leaning back in her chair. Mycroft offered a thin smile.

"Rest assured, your abilities are one of the few things I'll never lose trust in," he proclaimed dryly. Her loyalties were another matter, and one he preferred not to delve into right now, since it already deprived him of sleep on occasional nights. He looked at Sherlock who stopped typing again. "Don't follow her," he issued briefly.

"I won't," Sherlock replied with instant obedience which caused Mycroft to suspect he was planning otherwise.

"I'm asking you to do this for a reason," he said quietly and seriously, fixing his brother with an attentive gaze. "I hope you remember what it was."

With that, he left his brother and The Woman to each other's company.

In terms of control and reining Sherlock in, Irene Adler was quite possibly the best choice of a companion that could be made for him. Yet at the same time, almost contradicting that view of things, she was also the worst and most dangerous one when it came to Sherlock's wildness and over-interpreted sense of freedom. She certainly would firmly and victoriously navigate him out of any ideas that could be harmful to him, but would – depending on circumstances – endorse most ideas that would have a catastrophic result for others. The line between the welfare of Sherlock and the welfare of others was often thin and barely tangible, as proven many times in Mycroft's experience – oftentimes, it happened that as a consequence of putting the safety of others at risk, Sherlock put his own at an even bigger one.

His brother was something of an altruist and egoist at the same time. In the grand scope of things, he certainly was selfless, as best exemplified by the memorable leap off Saint Bart's he took for John, Lestrade and Mrs Hudson. He gave his life for them quite literally – he destroyed his work, reputation and terms of existence, and for him that _was_ his life. But when it came to smaller things, he would choose himself before others in a way that was essentially harmless, but very quickly explained the extremely small number of friends he had. Caring was not an advantage.

But it seemed, both of them had failed to escape that flaw, Mycroft thought as he made his way down the street, his pace measured by the rhythmic sound of his umbrella lightly hitting against the sidewalk. For him, it was only Sherlock. For Sherlock, it was four people now.

That fourth person was what concerned Mycroft the most. Sherlock had already betrayed him (for the lack of a less petty word…) for Irene Adler, and as the time passed, the _ardour_ of his affections for the woman only grew. He was passionate about her, and there was a period of time where Mycroft feared that while Sherlock jumped for John, Lestrade and Mrs Hudson, for Irene Adler he would push any number of people off that same roof. Luckily, after closer observation, that fear seemed less realistic, and Mycroft breathed something comparable to a sigh of relief.

Still, the concern remained. There was the concern of loyalty – until now, he commanded Sherlock's unvaried loyalty, ultimately he was the one to whom Sherlock's alliance was the strongest, overpowering all others. Now, however, the balance has shifted, leaving him in a very high probability of losing if he was put in competition with Irene Adler over Sherlock's loyalties. It wasn't a possessive fear on his part – it was a fear of Sherlock's impartiality, Sherlock's integrity of judgments, becoming blurred at some point, affected by his feelings.

He had to admit that Sherlock's… _relationship_ with Irene did not alter his personality, and that lent some hope for the fact that his neutrality of judgment might stay intact.

All the same, with hindsight, he recognised the inevitability of it all – they were both too uniquely like each other for it not to result in an emotional liaison. What he resented about it so much, was probably the potential it had of putting Sherlock in handicapping pain – his brother went to pieces twice already, first when he thought Irene Adler had died, and afterwards when realising how blatantly and typically he had been used. Granted, he repented for that other fact more than satisfactorily, but the incident as such remained.

Sherlock seemed to trust Irene Adler not to put him in pain again. Or maybe, he trusted her not to put him in more pain than he thought she was worth…

"Morning, Sir," Anthea smiled at him vaguely as he reached his office.

"Morning," he replied. The sight of his assistant reminded him of the chief reason why he hoped Sherlock would not follow Irene to Norton's house, and he frowned slightly under the feeling of slow pressure that grew steadily over the past months.

"Coffee on your desk. Got you a doughnut – yellow icing, Hundreds And Thousands…" she spoke as she texted something briefly on her Blackberry, and he almost smiled at her last remark.

"Thank you," he headed for the door, and stopped in the frame, glancing at her over his shoulder. "Come to me in half an hour. There's something I need you to do."

* * *

"You weren't allowed to follow me."

"I'm not. I'm _coming with you_. A very distinctive difference."

"More like, a distinction without a difference."

"Works either way."

Irene glanced up at the detective marching beside her, and smiled slightly at the vague shadow of an extremely pleased smirk curling in the corners of his damn enticing lips. And the expression went quite well with the smugness in his eyes. Aware of being observed, he glanced at her as well, and they shared a brief look of confidential mischief. She had to say, he was getting rather good at misbehaving.

To lower the risk rate of recognition by any unwanted third parties, Irene dressed much more casually than her favoured selection of expensive designer labels – she wore comfortable jeans with shoes on a small heel and a spring jacket over tight, sleeveless top. On his part, Sherlock was decked off rather pleasingly also in jeans, sneakers and a black hoodie – samples of the assortment she had selected for him during their work against Moriarty's crime web. He carried those well, she judged, entertaining the thought not for the first time, and dedicated a small moment to enjoyment as she observed him.

As they reached Georgiana Norton's house, Irene walked ahead to check for any signs of observation that Janda might have set up, but found nothing, and soon, with the freshly copied keys, she and Sherlock admitted themselves into the lawyer's abode.

Sherlock's eyes worked fast, soaking up every single detail and deriving all the information it could provide. The scratch on the table's leg. The smudge on the sofa. The dried up flowers in the empty vase, moved behind the light curtains. The painting. The books on the stand near the sofa. The laptop on the table. The opened book laid on the laptop. The dust on the telly remote.

"The safe first," he murmured slowly in a voice detached in thoughtfulness as he let his eyes linger on the sofa for a moment more.

He followed Irene as she pulled the painting, opening it like a door and revealing a standard issue from 2007, a four digit code. He examined the keys for signs of wearing, and found three digits to be polished through frequent use – 3, 4 and 0, which meant one of them was pressed twice in the coding process. Turning to his eidetic memory, he called the image of a phone keypad before his eyes, eyes hovering motionlessly in the air as he checked what the digits could spell if used in a standard texting arrangement. Zero was a blank on the phone keypad, which limited almost any options severely, which meant it had to have been a strictly numeric code. It couldn't have been a randomly selected number, because people choose different digits for that, while here the zero was being repeated, so-

"Her sister's birthday," Irene's clear voice, soaked with satisfied cleverness, sounded just beside his hear, and he turned his head, returning to the visual world around him. "She's an older sister, and given their strong relationship, her little sister's birth date is what she probably considers the most important date in her life… luckily for us, I considered the possibility of her using it as the code, and happened to learn the date. Fourth of March," she spoke with a sharp, luscious smile that revealed a glimpse of her teeth as she deftly punched in the code.

The safe beeped, confirming correctness, and the red diode changed colour to green.

Irene looked at him, arching her eyebrows briefly in an expression of playful excitement, before opening the safe's door.

In the small (30x30x20 cm) inside lay a scattered collection of papers layering the bottom, and two small packets of different dimensions and wrappings. He reached into the safe and inspected the first item he took hold of – an A4 format white envelope, glued closed, containing approximately 20 sheets of standard issue paper, going by the weight and thickness. It was addressed to Peter Blake from Anabelle Foster, both specifications printed in Times New Roman 14. And there were no postmarks or stamps. Very few signs of fatigue, almost none at all… He sniffed the sealed strand. Glue, licked to close, seems like about a year ago, maybe two at most…

Irene reached into the safe and pulled out several envelopes, holding one already in her hand. She flipped through them, her thin, sharp eyebrows knitting together in increasing intensity of focus, and she moved to the table to lay out the envelopes, Sherlock promptly emptying the safe of what remained in it. Together, they surveyed the contents of Georgiana Norton's hiding place – almost all were envelopes. Various formats, colours and ages, some addressed by hand and some printed, sealed in diverse methods and weighing different amounts.

But none had any postage, and none were addressed to Georgiana Norton or coming from her.

"There's an iPhone in this one…" Irene's voice was thick with focus as she traced the outline of an A5 envelope held in her hands, the rustles informing him the inside was lined with bubble foil. "Fountain pen… addressed by a woman."

"Yes, one can never be too careful with the name Leslie," Sherlock hummed under his breath as he lifted one of the packets. "Light, but tightly packed, securely wrapped… It seems it contains something made of paper," he gave an improvised diagnosis, proceeding to shake the small packet and sniffed it. Old, musty, with a hint of stale paper that certainly wasn't exuded by the clinically sterile wrapping layered with cellophane.

"Eleven envelopes and two packets…" Irene produced her new camera phone from her pocket (shamefully enough, he had to own up to a gesture of sentimentality progressing far enough to cause him to purchase that phone for her, justifying it with the disguise of olive branch offered to her when he came asking for her help against Moriarty's empire). It was a newer model, but the passcode layout was the same, and he watched as she deftly and almost absently (concentrated on the matter at hand) typed in SHER. For some reason, it stirred up a reaction of violent contentment in him, even if only for a second.

One by one, she photographed each envelope from both sides, and he examined the ones she'd taken care of already, spreading them out and eyeing them briskly in a brief initial phase of definition by comparison. No addresser or addressee was ever repeated, nor were the writing styles among those addressed by hand. And yet, they all were inevitably connected, as verified by the fact of never having been posted and usually displaying very little signs of wear or other damage. Also, the obvious fact that they all were gathered in Georgiana Norton's possession.

Was the object of Janda's interest among the thirteen items in her safe? If yes, it made the envelopes connected to her work, since Janda conducted his investigation under the professional angle – if he aimed at something connected to any other sphere of her life, he would have infiltrated in the appropriate field.

"Any names ring a bell?" he asked Irene as she took the last photograph.

"No. I'll get an opportunity to check her notebook calendar, she keeps her professional life there…" she headed for the laptop, picking up the book that lay open on top of it, and relocating it on the table, though in the exact same position, not allowing it to close. Starting the computer, she sat in the chair, tapping her unpainted nails against the table. "Check the sofa," she recommended and narrowed her eyes as she briefly pondered over the password. Heading for the suggested destination, he heard her type in only three failed attempts before inevitably succeeding.

The sofa had a dip created by continuous focus of bodyweight pressed into the mattress. Sherlock laid down on the sofa, assuming the exact position suggested by the imprint (on his back, rested against the right armrest, legs propped up on correspondingly on the left one), relaxed, and from that arrangement reached in the most natural gesture under the sofa, his forearm brushing along the exact path of the smudge on the rim. Flawlessly, his fingers detected an item, his touch recognising all the traits and elements and classifying it as a thick notebook before his eyes examined it.

The notebook was thick, bound in hardcover in simple, pale green colour with no texts or patterns imprinted. The pages were dirtied with frequent use and browsing (a characteristic tell-tale dark grey progression on the edge told him how far along was the notebook filled with writing), and in between them were placed various separate sheets of paper, postcards and photographs.

He opened the diary, viewing the first entry – eleventh of May two years ago. Having established that, he flipped the bulk of written pages over to the place where the notes ended, and skimmed over the entry from ten days ago.

_Getting concerned. That Blaha man seems to be following me. Went to see Sherlock Holmes… not sure if it was a good idea, but thought it was the only option at the time. So many clients told me about him. He sure lives up to his reputation (almost scary, the way he figured everything out about me), and which is worse, he seems to suspect I have something that Blaha – I mean, Janda – wants. Turns out, Blaha's actual name is Janda and he's an agent of Czech Intelligence. What do the Czech want with me? The logical answer is nothing, so I think it's something Janda wants individually… And Holmes knows I'm withholding information (God, too much work, I'm starting to sound like bloody police reports…), but there was no way I could tell him about the safe. It's a matter of professional integrity, I will not lose it because of some Czech agent. Integrity, trust and discretion are valuable in my profession, I'm not going to risk that. I'll just have to listen to his instructions and apply them to the safe as well. And anyway, I don't even _know for sure_ if the safe is really what that Janda man is after. I'm not going to risk so much over uncertainty – Holmes may be discreet, but that blog of his Doctor Watson friend's sure isn't…_

Sherlock winced wholeheartedly. It was not the first time that John's happy literary creativity proved a hindrance to his profession, as much as it, in other fields (advertisement) was an advantage. Still, at least he found out the envelopes were connected to Norton's professional life, and were apparently either to or from her clients. The obvious flaw of searching for such information in someone's personal journal, is that their writings on the subject are imprecise, lacking in detail and contain mental shortcuts – after all, the author is more than acquainted with the subject, they're not going to write lengthy explanations for their own use.

He turned the page, progressing to the next entry and finding it mostly dedicated to Irene, thus he merely skimmed over it, alerted to keywords and catchphrases that could signal an important topic, but found none. _Erin__ is so beautiful… lucky girl, being a stewardess… can't imagine having heaven all around me… she's so lively… went out for lunch… awful uncle…finishing the paperwork…_ - nothing of even remote sort of consequence. Also, it filled him with a brand of mild distaste at reading such mundanely romantic notes taken on Irene – it was a devaluation of her actual qualities, though, paradoxically, it could also be considered a confirmation of her acting talents.

The next entry was more hopeful in terms of the case.

_Mr Bastow took his envelope. I've gotta say I'm actually relieved. It wasn't such a good idea to take something so expensive… I know that all of those things are extremely valuable to their owners, but still, the financial worth of Mr Bastow's coins was scary, if they were, for example, stolen from me. I won't take such precious things anymore. Now I just have to wait for Mrs Jenkins to take her stamps, that's the only expensive thing I have left in the safe…_

Instant comprehension swept over the pieces of facts in Sherlock's brain and arranged them into a coherent picture. Georgiana Norton clearly was providing a special service to some of her clients whose freshly made wills she was consulting for quality – to the selected few, she offered the possibility of depositing the valuable elements of what they bequeathed in their wills. It was a rather smart idea – when fearing for something in their possession, people would either hide it in their house, in a bank or at the notary's, in regards of a will. Therefore, no one would suspect to look for the items in the private home of an average, inconspicuous testament lawyer.

"She's safekeeping the valuables of a few people whose wills she consulted," he issued aloud, flipping the pages of the diary in search for any notes that could serve to supplement his conclusions and help deduce which item in particular was the object of Janda's interest.

"It seems so…" Irene responded slowly as she clicked the mouse, eyes focused on the screen – clearly, she had made discoveries of her own that led her towards this same conclusion. "But we still don't know which of the deposits Janda is after."

Sherlock laid the open diary on his lap, bringing his fingertips together in a ritual gesture – through physical familiarity of it, he enhanced his cerebral processes. An idea was defining itself in his mind, and he studied it for a moment longer, merging it into alternative forms as he subsequently excluded some options due to circumstances.

"We could find out…" he spoke slowly, turning his eyes towards Irene who returned the gaze, cocking an eyebrow at him, her expression colouring with mocking challenge and dubiousness.

"I'm listening, dear," she said in an intense voice.

"We could do with Janda the same as I did with you and your phone…" he didn't really try to hide the small smirk that tugged at the corners of his lips at the memory of the victory.

"Fail for six months?" she retaliated flawlessly, turning his smirk into a fleeting scowl at the less flattering memory regarding the same battle, but he didn't let it linger.

"No… Smoke him out into betraying himself."

"Sounds sexy. Would you mind sharing the exact plan?"

"I've got about four ideas at the moment, need to modify and improve them according to circumstances, I'll let you know once the plan is complete…" he evaded, unhappily aware each of his four plans contained at least one handicapping flaw, and wasn't keen to let Irene know that.

She didn't respond, only returned to work on Georgiana Norton's computer, browsing the files with practiced ease, and he decided to resume his exploration of the journal. Perhaps Norton wrote down some suspicions as to the exact object of Janda's interest, which she would not admit to him, since it would require revealing the safe. The next entry may not have been dedicated to the subject that interested him at the moment, but the opening certainly caught his eye.

_Poor Erin. She told me about that girl she was once madly in love with. She said she was with her for three years and she honestly loved her, and was loved, they were happy. She said that girl was someone who matched her completely, the only person who actually understood her, really understood, not just got her. But Erin already was a stewardess at the time, so she kept leaving for flights, she was coming and going, and no matter how long a holiday she would have, there would always come a time when she eventually needed to go, sometimes for long. With time, this became an issue, but Erin didn't want to give up her job, because she loved it, she's such a free spirit… so eventually, as time passed, she decided to end the relationship, because she didn't want to make them both feel like prisoners. But she said it was mostly because it just stopped feeling right._

Sherlock swallowed, vaguely registering the unexpected constriction of his throat. His pulse was elevated with adrenaline of the sort that was released in moments of danger or sudden attack of weakness, to propel the body into survival, and his mind was attacked with a mild haze of confusion for a moment, causing him to revert to his solely mental self to tear through the fog, towards clarity.

Irene's thesis that disguise is, in fact, always a self-portrait, was a point of highly engrossing study to him for the last four years since he was acquainted with her idea of it. He found it an entirely new, effective and universal tool in the assortment serving to uncover the truth, and a highly valuable factor in the analysis of the disguised people. Irene's thesis was by all means true, he verified it multiply when studying the accessible examples in his course of work, as well as examining his own past disguises with hindsight, and concluding them to all contain an element of authority and power – consistent with his god complex that he knew he possessed, though perhaps not in the classic and complete variation.

Consequently, the imaginary stories told when being in character of the disguise, also reflected certain truths and inclinations about the storyteller. Irene's story about the person she supposedly loved and found completing to her own person, and whom she continuously kept leaving and coming back to…

He swallowed again, focusing his vision on the small fingerprint pressed in the corner of the page, turning to the familiar precision of analysis for comfort, trying for a moment of distance to appease his emotions. The external side of the little finger pad, right hand, woman's print, ink from a fountain pen, she must have been signing some official documents before turning to the diary, since the entry was written in a ball-point pen…

Drawing quiet, measured breaths, he returned to the emotional issue. Too many elements of Irene's story reflected their relationship for him to pass by the tale's ending indifferently. Her choice of disguise revealed itself to him in a new light – stewardess, desired, but always out of reach, unbound, taking care of people briefly, only to likely never see them again, coming and going, not settled… _No matter how hard we try, a disguise is always a self-portrait_.

Was she considering the idea of leaving him then? But unlike the girl in Irene's story, he never even once remarked on their habit of parting and reuniting in any negative way.

"There's an interesting look. Found anything new?" Irene's voice snapped him abruptly out of his thoughts, and he turned to look at her, mouth already parting to give her a contradictive response, but was caught for a brief moment, taking in her face.

She was looking at him with a delicate mixture of interest and puzzlement, though the latter in a very small ratio. The thin, sharp eyebrows were arched enquiringly over her shrewd blue eyes surrounded by light make-up that, through darkness of the frame, made them even more striking, calling attention and attractive. He had familiarised himself with every single feature of her face, just as he was familiar with every inch and shape of her body, her whole physical entirety imprinted in his memory with detail that was extreme even for his standards. And yet, her mind always remained something of a riddle to him, while she admitted him to the essence of herself, when she wished to her thoughts were still known only to her, and he relished that fact with the same overwhelming fascination he had felt when they first met. But now, for once, it was an emotional disadvantage for him to be unable to read all her thoughts.

"No. Nothing," he said somewhat automatically in response to her question, and closed the diary as she turned back to the laptop screen.

He tossed the notebook back under the sofa, the item suddenly offending and uncomfortable in his hands, and felt his body flooded with driving need of activity as it responded to the freshly released adrenaline. He got up from the sofa and left the room, surrendering to the need of motion, and headed to the room Norton's sister used to occupy, half-hoping to find anything that would allow him to plunge into cold, familiar rhythm of analysis.

The notion of his and Irene's relationship ending was an almost unfamiliar one, a fact conditioned strongly by their shared fidelity and reasons for it – namely, the uniqueness they both represented. On his part, he was firmly assured he had no desire to terminate the bond and connection between them, and knew that the only possible ending of it could occur through death or her decision.

Should she decide to end it, he would accept it (really, in terms of reality – did he have an alternative?), but had no idea what impact it would have on his life, especially emotion-wise. The only thing he could take for granted in that regard, was that it would certainly be destructive, even though he didn't know to what degree.

The very idea of his relationship with Irene ending, was a surprising concept. Once more, it categorised in the verbally unspecified area, and faced with it so abruptly by his sudden onset of insecurity he needed to realise the full extent of it.

_All lives end… all hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage… Sherlock_. His brother's words echoed through his mind in a sudden recollection, and he found himself revising their meaning. All lives end… spoken in a mortuary, it easily referred to death in the biological sense, but perhaps what Mycroft had also meant, was the idea of figurative lives ending. In an interpersonal relation of emotional kind, a form of figurative life was created between the people involved in it. Apparently, Mycroft suggested that with time, every such life must eventually end.

Time was never a relevant concept in the existential aspect of his life. It mattered little to him how much time has passed between certain personal events, how old he was and how long has it been since he'd known some people. Consequently with that, future, in terms of personal plans, never intrigued him as a concept – he had no aspirations to attain in it, since he already was living the life he wished for himself, being the world's only consulting detective and providing stimuli to his brain, exercising his cerebral capacities and conducting experiments.

In the same fashion, he never observed his affiliation with Irene through the prism of future. He had no plans, and he was fairly sure neither did she – it wasn't for them to idly daydream and project frankly horrifying images of house purchase and offspring. Neither of them wanted anything from the future, so they never paid much attention to it, what mattered was the present moment, because it already had all they wanted from it.

Therefore, it was something of a surprise, even to himself (especially to himself), when he realised that, in terms of vaguely specified future as such, he would very much like to.. _keep_ Irene. The only perception of his future with her that he had until now, was that he didn't want to relinquish what they shared. What he knew now, was that he wanted it to continue.

The two statements were – logically – tantamount to each other, but he found that emotionally they had very different significances. It was growth on his part, he thought – growth in awareness and emotional consciousness. And since for so long he viewed strong emotions as disadvantage, and since for The Woman he went against himself and betrayed that view, understanding them was the only advantage he could get.

Disguise is a self-portrait… but portraits aren't accurate. They are slightly artistic, embellished and conceal some details while making up others. Especially in a self-portrait. The surprise had caused him to treat every element of Irene's disguise as a literal reflection and representation of her actual self. It was a mistake, because such view was grossly inaccurate. Emotions _were_ dangerous when not understood properly – just now, his emotion of fear took control over his perception. Like with the Baskerville fog incident, he saw what wasn't there – he saw what his fear wanted him to see.

(Not to mention that if she wanted to leave him, she'd have done so already.)

His rapid upsurge of insecurity contained and appeased (though the embarrassment at being carried away remained), he returned to the living room. He found Irene finishing to plant Mycroft's bug on the underside of the table, and he took the envelopes back into the safe, arranging them into the precise same state in which they found them after opening the door.

"We'll send the names on the envelopes to Mycroft, both the addressers and the addressees…" Irene drawled in focus as she typed quickly on her phone. "If there are any connections to Janda, he'll immediately find them, since he's been hunting for him for years."

"I'm sure he'll be thrilled."

Irene's red lips stretched into a smile as she locked the phone.

SHER.

* * *

**I hope you liked it :) I'm sorry about the bit with Sherlock's insecurity - the idea plagued me, and I just had to get it out of my system, or I would explode, so bear with me here. I decided to solve it like this, with no cliche reassurances of love or Sherlock wrestling with the fear for the remainder of the story - he's clever enough a boy to work some things out by himself. **

**Anyway - just one more chapter to go, and then a sequel with a plot that is repetitively being hinted at in this story.**

**As to the reviews - car and petrol again :D**


	6. The hat

**Hmm... I hope you guys like long chapters. I'm sorry, but this one came out _much_ longer than I had planned...**

**Also, I apologise for the horrible delay! *mortified* But I really had major difficulties with this chapter, for some reason I had a block after block. Also, my keyboard broke, which is a major hindrance when writing :P**

**That being said, here goes the last chapter, and I hope to post the sequel - _The Empty Room_ - soon :D**

**Another tip of the hat to Guy Ritchie, this time Irene and walnuts.**

* * *

There was something bothersome, and as soon as she blurredly noticed that, she became aware of a sharp, disrupting sound that drilled through the layer of sleep into her awareness. Barely managing to open her eyes, she remained vague for a moment, with no additional thoughts, just the one, hazy recognition – the sound was Sherlock's phone. A classic ring of an old phone.

She always had been capable of waking up fast, and the skill didn't fail her now either, but she allowed herself some slowness, not feeling the need to mobilise all of her capacities just yet. She lifted her head off the pillow and looked across the dark room at the chest of drawers on top of which Sherlock's phone glowed, buzzing in rhythm with its rings. Beside it, the digital alarm clock informed her kindly that it was 2:53 am – she'd gone to bed a little past midnight, bored with lack of things to do in regards of the case, and clearly Sherlock hadn't joined her yet.

Irene lazily laid her head back down on the pillow, listening to Sherlock's approaching footsteps, and soon enough the door opened, the brainy man heading for his phone. The glow from the screen flashed across his pale face, emphasising those delicious cheekbones and turning the colour of his eyes into some sort of digital fantasy as he looked at the caller ID. He glanced at her, arching his eyebrows briefly with a mockingly excited look, tossing the phone up on his hand, and unlocked it with a flourish.

"Hello?" his voice was soft in the night, deep and barely audible, and she found it extremely attractive.

She watched him as he listened for a moment, his focus growing deeper on his face, bringing his eyebrows slightly together, eyes becoming vacant in terms of the reality around him as his mind transported itself to the other end of the phone line. There was some good news being reported there, because his left eyebrow twitched up in an expression of interest, the distance smoothly evaporating from his eyes, replaced with a spark, and in view of those promising signs, she sat up slowly in bed, stretching and enjoying the delightful refreshment of it.

"Has anything been taken?" her ears pricked up at his words, and she observed him with lingering interest. "Are you sure? No, don't come here, you might be under observation. Go online and call me via Skype – all the contact details are on my website."

With that, he disconnected, looking at the phone as he wobbled it up and down in his hand, pensive for a moment. Irene watched him, mildly curious, already knowing who he talked to and more or less what had happened, but she always enjoyed watching the wheels turn in that gorgeous brain of his. It was a very stimulating process to observe.

Tossing his phone on his hand once more in a sudden return to liveliness, Sherlock turned to face her fully, his eyes shining with excitement and anticipation of further development, of something _to do_.

"Get up, _dear_," he very poorly mimicked her saucy tone, bodyweight swaying from one side to another as he couldn't stay still. "Georgiana Norton's house has just been broken into."

Less than thirty seconds later, she was sitting across the living room table from him, wearing his robe, while he opened up his laptop opposite from her to keep her beyond the reach of the camera. She liked watching him in moments like these – thinking, powered with a small shot of intellectual adrenaline and bustling about some preparations for more thinking. He was tense then, but in a bright way, tension of anticipation instead of anxiety, fresh and eager while remaining intensely focused on several things at the same time, and his eyes carried a strong, infectious shine.

She understood it. She too thoroughly enjoyed thinking, especially the taut, fast paced reasoning and figuring out, and she relished the opportunities when they came. Jim was an opportunity, at the time – the thinking she did for him was one of the best thinking times she ever did in her life, but even the self-crowned Napoleon of crime (she always considered that name blatantly ridiculous) paled in comparison with Sherlock Holmes.

Jim hadn't been much less intelligent than Sherlock – no, no, the boys were something like equals, though ultimately with a slight advantage to Sherlock. But their ways of and reasons for thinking varied very distinctly, and Sherlock's appealed to her unquestionably more. The sheer passion – an emotion most people claimed he didn't have – he displayed for the actual act of thinking, _proper thinking_, was fascinating and contagious. His ultimate goal was always to think and to counteract something by thinking, he thought for thinking.

Jim thought for doing – at the end of his thoughts, there was always an act of something, and the thinking was directed by the goal. Much less original and attractive, though she had to give him points for deviousness. Sherlock, in reverse, did for thinking, acted for thinking, and his cleverness was at the same time sneaky and direct, depending on the situation.

In terms of figuring out what they liked, they were both easy – Jim liked fun, Sherlock liked puzzles. And her own partiality for puzzles with a bit of fun, instead of fun with a bit of puzzle, was the first step to enjoying Sherlock Holmes more than she enjoyed James Moriarty. Sherlock was such delicious fun to challenge, and was quite a puzzle in return.

And, most of all, she always liked detective stories.

And detectives.

He looked up at her over the rim of his laptop screen, and his eyes lingered probingly on hers, proceeding to searchingly sweep over her face. She could almost see the small ideas dancing in that smooth blue as he tried to read her and her reasons for staring at him, and she let him play for a bit more, before trying to read him in return. He was excited about the case, and had been thinking about Janda, because his body was angled towards the files from Mycroft placed on the table next to his laptop. He was impatient, she could see his ankle moving side to side in quick, small movements at a fast pace. He had hopes about the case, because his eyes were shining.

She returned her gaze to his face and let it linger, simply looking at him as he looked at her across the silence in the almost completely dark room. The only light came from his laptop screen and the vague glow of the fireplace where the last flames licked over the embers, casting a warm glow on her cheek, while his face was illuminated by the cool light of his screen. The glow brought out the slight touch of rapture in his eyes, and for probably the first time this expression in the eyes of a person beholding her did not cause a feeling of pride and deep satisfaction in her. Instead, she felt a quiet strum of… affection. Along with the intense hum of satisfaction of inducing that emotion in the great Sherlock Holmes, of course.

She allowed the corners of her lips to twitch in a small smile, before she very carefully arranged the features of her face into a precise copy of Sherlock's expression. She took in every single detail, from the slightest tensions in his eyebrows to the muscles in his jaw, absorbed them and displayed on her own face. He noticed the slow change and blinked, hovering for a moment, before a corner of his lips curled up in a humorous smirk which she returned in her own style, shedding the imitation of his expression from her face.

The silence was interrupted by a ring announcing the pending connection on Skype, the sound tugging Sherlock's eyes back to the screen. He hit Enter as Irene leaned forward, resting her chin on clasped hands and focused on listening carefully to compensate for not being able to see Norton.

"Hello," Georgiana's voice fed through the speakers.

"Tell me everything from the beginning," Sherlock instructed, wasting no time, his eyes issuing that pressuring, demanding clear look that so many people powerlessly caved in to. Weaklings. But the look was sexy, she sure was happy to give him that.

"I was sleeping, I woke up, I don't know why, maybe I heard something," Norton sounded shaken, but clearly trying to get a grip of herself and rein in her shock, the professional lawyer in her coming through. "After a moment, I heard someone moving in the living room, at first I thought it was just the wind or something, but then I heard it again, and I heard footsteps," she forcefully contained the tremble in her voice. She clearly was stopping herself from rambling too quickly, mistaking the intense focus on Sherlock's face for struggling to comprehend. "I have a gun, so I took it, just in case, and went to the living room, but when I got there, there was no one there anymore. But the window was wide open, and I remember it was only tilted at the top before that, because I always leave it like that for the night."

"Did you load the gun before going in?" Sherlock asked in an intense, focused murmur, his eyes on the screen, fingertips touching together in that sexy way of his.

"…Yes."

"Then that's when he heard you and knew you were armed, he fled preferring not to risk anything…" Sherlock rattled his deduction in a quick voice of monotonous, intense drawl, almost under his breath, eyes still staring intensely but now absently at the screen. Irene listened in concentration, her own thought process very much alike to his, going by what he just said, and hence she quite confidently anticipated his next question – or at least, what she thought he should ask, in order not to lose her respect. "Tell me – has anything particular happened at your work today?"

"Pardon?"

"Anything that you think might have caused Janda to break into your house – yes, it was him," Sherlock half-snapped at the end, with mild irritation preceding the inevitable question.

There was a moment of silence as Georgiana Norton clearly was thinking, and Irene devoted herself to the same course of action – only, with more effect. Janda broke into Norton's house without preparation or careful planning and in a hurry – all that could easily be deduced from the fact that he left with nothing, had he planned more, he would have succeeded. So it was an act of desperation, then. What could have caused him to become so desperate that he would play such a high risk?

Only one thing…

Irene quickly grasped a pen and the first piece of paper that was in sight (which happened to be Sherlock's chemistry experiment notes, but he would get over it) and wrote a short and clear message on the reverse. She held up the paper, calling Sherlock's attention, and she watched his clear eyes flash fast across the three words.

_Envelopes – who died?_

Only one thing could have caused Janda to become so desperate – the fear of losing what he wanted. She was spooked by Sherlock's smoke alarm, since the idea of fire threatened the safety of her phone. The only thing that could threaten Janda with the loss of something locked up in Georgiana Norton's safe, was the idea of it being taken out of the safe. And the only thing that could have prompted it, was the death of the envelope's addresser, which would mean the envelope being passed on to the addressee.

Sherlock slowly closed his eyes for a brief moment in an inconspicuous sign that he understood her message, and returned his gaze to the screen as Georgiana Norton spoke again.

"I don't think so, I'm sorry… I don't know what he could be after."

Irene could see a flash of impatience gleam through Sherlock's eyes as he made the decision to play in open cards.

"Miss Norton, who died?" he asked in a direct, strong tone – combined with the coldness of his blue eyes and the severity on his face, she thought he was being damn hot. "From among your clients, who died and whose will is going to be executed now?"

There was a brief pause, and she could very easily imagine the expression on Norton's face – surprised, uncertain and hesitant.

"Mr Holmes…"

"I assure you my friend Doctor Watson will not make this public," Sherlock offered almost indifferently, his intense stare nearly frozen to the screen in focus.

Another moment of silence followed, but Irene knew the results were right around the corner, and she waited along with Sherlock as the brief second stretched slightly, ticking by.

"Well…" Norton's voice was compliant. "I think I have something that can interest Mr Janda… and now that you've mentioned dying, I think I know what it is…" she hesitated again, to which Sherlock prompted her by slightly raising his eyebrows. "When Mr Albert Collins made his will, he consulted it with me, to make sure it was iron clad. I've known him before and he has my trust and it seems I do his, because he asked me to keep one of the things he bequeathed to his daughter in his will. I agreed, because he was a very good client. It was an envelope addressed by himself, in his handwriting, to his daughter – he didn't tell me what's inside it, and I didn't ask. He asked me to keep it for him, because he doesn't want to lose it or put it in a bank safety deposit box. So I agreed to keep it or him. And it happens that Mr Collins died today, at one-thirty am. Mr Holmes, if… if you really think it was Mr Janda who broke into my house, then I think it's the only reason he'd do it. Do you think he's going to try again?" there was fear and a slight tinge of panic in Norton's voice as she spoke faster and faster when getting to the end of her story.

"That depends on the process of executing the will. If there's any delay with it, he's certainly going to try, his only chance of getting it, is before anyone sees what is inside the envelope. Are there any complications with the will?"

Georgiana Norton let out a faint groan of distress.

"Yes, Mr Holmes, yes, there are…! Mr Collins drowned while swimming in a lake, so even though he was old, his death is being investigated, just in case…! What am I going to do with that envelope, I don't want it in my house!"

"Well, you're going to have to keep it, if you accepted the deal in the first place," Sherlock's voice was touched with that attractive angry growl. "But with a bit of luck we might relieve you of the burden soon. For now lock the doors and windows and call the police. You haven't seen him, so he thinks you won't suspect him. I'll be in touch first thing tomorrow morning, and hopefully we'll be able to arrange a plan."

"Thank you…"

"Have a good night," sometimes he was absolutely deliciously cruel, Irene thought as she saw the barely contained smirk begging to touch his lips at his malicious remark as he closed the laptop and rested his elbows against it, proceeding to touch his fingertips together.

"Nice little idea to earn some extra cash, you have to give her that," she said after a moment of meditative silence. Sherlock's eyes travelled up from over an invisible spot on the table to meet hers.

"Hmm…"

"Safekeeping some things that the owners don't necessarily want to admit to, officially at least…"

"Like those Czech artefacts that Janda approached her about," Sherlock agreed in a deep voice, so soft in his thoughtfulness that it barely hovered above the silence. "She probably was keeping some of them, too…"

"Though that Collins man rather screwed things up for us when he died," Irene sliced through the still quietness with a fresher tone, stretching her hands to relieve some tension in her arms that had gathered in her muscles while she focused on the conversation between Sherlock and the oblivious lawyer. "If Janda gets too scared, he won't try for the envelope again, and we won't have an opportunity to catch him."

Sherlock's eyes gleamed up at her impishly, and she arched her eyebrows in anticipation. What do you know, he had yet another idea…!

"Depends on how much he wants the envelope."

"Hm, depends on what's inside it," she pointed out with a capricious pout. Sherlock gave a miniscule upward nod, causing realisation to fill her head. "Oh, I see… copy the envelope, get into her house, open the original envelope, see what's inside and put it back into the copied one and seal it… presuming, of course, that she doesn't change the code in her safe after the burgle scare," she pointed out.

"Well, we know she's sentimental, so we can always find out the new code… every password based on sentiment can eventually be cracked," he pointed back out, and she didn't enjoy the brief glint of smugness that settled on his face or a moment. She decided to remind him there were some boundaries in teasing her, unlike in teasing the usual, mundane ordinary people.

"Well, honey, you know I love you, but I can always change my passcode and you'll never know what hit you," she cooed coldly, pinning him down with a penetrative stare.

He shifted awkwardly in his chair, and didn't retaliate for a moment. She knew he didn't like to be called 'honey', since Moriarty addressed him once that way. She also knew he was uncomfortable when she spoke of love in the coldly mocking manner, because he didn't know what to make of it.

Of course she loved him. But she wouldn't phrase it that way, and she knew he wouldn't do it on his own behalf either – frankly, she wouldn't want him to. It was… too weak, too dull, to put it his way. Most of all, it was unneeded – she knew, and she also was fairly sure he knew as well. Speaking about it so directly and openly would somehow insult the understanding of intellects that they shared.

They had said it in different ways, on several occasions in the past – verbally and physically, and they both knew what it meant each time they said it. She was sure of it exactly because of the main reason why she did have that feeling for him – because she understood him, his essence and wholeness, and he understood her as well. It was quite a novel feeling to be understood so completely. And she had to admit she found it extremely pleasant and addictive.

But it wasn't the time to think about that. She didn't have Sherlock's habit of fading out and not noticing when people left the flat and went to Dublin for two days – as John swore to her had once happened to him.

"Very well, let's start copying the envelope then… We'll try tomorrow or the day after. And, with a bit of luck, maybe Janda coughed and Mycroft's bug caught that – but I wouldn't get my hopes up."

Sherlock looked at her with sudden interest and recollection, and reached for his phone.

"Who are you going to bother now?" she asked with a small frown.

Sherlock responded with a mockingly mirthless smile.

"Your client, of course. Mycroft wanted you to find out what Janda wants with Norton, nothing more than that. We can say with clear conscience that your employment has ran its course."

"Oh, you really can't stand to be out of the spotlight, can you?" she teased him with a narrow grin, and he scowled childishly at her in reply. "Put him on speaker. I've always wanted to hear Mycroft Holmes in bed."

He ignored her pointedly while waiting for the connection, and she sighed, getting up from the table, and made her way over to the mantelpiece where she left her own phone.

"Hello, Mycroft, terribly sorry to wake you," Sherlock spoke behind her back, without an ounce of the remorse suggested in his words. "No, clearly it couldn't wait if I decided to call you rather than text. We know which envelope Janda is after. Yes. No. No, I absolutely did not. Albert Collins. So, I would say Irene got the job done. It's all up to you now, isn't it?"

On this news, Irene turned back around to face him again, arching one eyebrow in provocative question as she unlocked her phone without watching. Sherlock noticed her look but didn't respond to it, pretending to be too much focused on Mycroft's reply to regard her teasing surprise. Though her surprise was not all teasing – she actually was somewhat intrigued about how he relinquished the opportunity to sleuth around a bit more and set up an elaborate trap for Janda in order to catch him. He must have had a higher purpose in mind… she wondered if Mycroft would deduce that as well.

"I know, which is why I'm interested in how you plan to catch Janda _now_," Sherlock continued his conversation. "Well, the simplest way would be to find out what's inside the envelope and then-" he stopped abruptly, his blue eyes clouding with a shadow as he frowned, the small scowl on his lips telling her that he had been cut off with Mycroft's adamant protest. "No. Well, I just might," Sherlock snapped spitefully, donning on the facial expression of an argumentative five-year old. She looked at him for a moment longer, just in case he decided to stick his tongue out, because if that was the case, she wanted this to be one of the crowning jewels in her new camera phone. Alas, no such luck.

Sherlock disconnected and with a huff placed the phone back on the table – in contradiction to the said huff, however, his eyes had a spark dancing in them.

"He says to thank you very much for your _outstanding_ service," he announced in a voice touched with sarcasm. "And not to interfere with the case from now on."

"Well, that was predictable if you called him," she pointed out almost inattentively, unable to hold back the smallest hint of patronising from entering her tone. "Which means there must be something bigger you gave that up for," she concluded with a quirked eyebrow.

Pausing his pacing in small circles, he tossed her a suggestive, almost playful look spiced up with a fleeing smile in the corners of his lips, but said nothing, turning around and continuing to pace, a light spring of liveliness added to his steps. Irene hummed quietly in mocking wonder, slinking down to take a seat in the chair previously occupied by Sherlock, arranging herself comfortably sideways to the table, and considered the possibilities.

He was pacing in a rhythmic way, and while his upper body displayed a noncommittal amount of movements, his legs worked in an almost precisely measured ratio, occasionally accentuated by nods of his head, his phone pressed pensively against his mouth. He was counting, she realised, and smiled. Counting, not calculating – he was listing something in his head, and given the subject as well as the recurring sibling rivalry between him and Mycroft (she had meant it when she texted him with her opinion that John's blog was hilarious), she fairly quickly worked out what was it exactly.

"You want to know what Mycroft _really_ wants Janda for," she issued a statement. "And you've got… what, four ideas, so far?" she cocked her head with a mockingly sweet smile.

"Five, actually," he attempted nonchalance, but the glint of appreciation in his eyes didn't escape her notice, even despite the nightly darkness of the room.

"Well, that's certainly too much company for me to share you with," she yawned, stretching her hands out with a sleepy hum, and got up from the chair, leaving her phone on the table. "I shall leave you to it," she brushed her hand over his cheek as she passed him by. "I'm not that interested. Wake me up when you're done."

* * *

"Albert Collins was a Nazi hunter in his youth, in the '60s."

Irene opened her eyes, reluctantly urging her eyesight into focus on the face of the detective silhouetted against the window filled with bright sunlight. He was leaning in very close over her, and judging from the eagerness in his eyes, he wasn't particularly fazed by her groggy lack of interest.

"Took you long enough," she murmured, rolling onto her other side to face away from him, after acknowledging the time was 7:32 am.

"And he worked with one Moravec – Janda's dead father," he didn't take her actions as a discouragement, and she ensured him she was still listening by emitting a quiet sound of mild attention in her throat. "So I believe that during the course of their collaboration, they hit upon the trail of something, and Collins made his share of it a secret. Whatever it was, he couldn't have any profit from it while he was still alive, so he left it to his daughter, and Janda wants it now, doubtlessly having learned about it from something left after his father. It's an information, because the envelope we've seen is flat, containing four sheets of paper at most."

"A sunken U-Boat location?" Irene issued a sleepy supposition, prompting him to talk further, because she very much enjoyed the delicious tones of his deep voice – quite a good sound to have in the early morning, she mused.

"I've thought about that possibility and I retain it – it's not impossible, however unlikely it is," he replied after a moment of thoughtful silence – she could almost see the pensive pout on his lips. "Once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true."

"So how does it bring you closer to finding out what Mycroft wants with Janda?" she asked, rolling onto her back and stretching, savouring the deep breath that came afterwards.

Sherlock's bed smelled of him, his hair, short hours of deep sleep and a bright sort of sleepy freshness, and she enjoyed that fragrance thoroughly, as it made her downright want to roll a little bit around in the sheets and bury herself in the covers to collect that scent with all of herself. God, it would make one sexy brand of perfume… could be named 'Sherlocked'.

"Strictly, it doesn't," he replied. "Which means there's something else, something non-Nazi."

"I haven't noticed any World War II inclinations in your brother," Irene agreed in a relaxed hum, closing her eyes as she tilted her head back comfortably on the pillow. "I must say, dear, I will be thoroughly unimpressed if all that took you four hours to figure out."

"Don't be absurd, it's not all I did," he scoffed, raising some noise near the wardrobe, which caused her to open her eyes and watch him as he went about choosing his clothes for the new day. "I looked into the investigation on Norton's break-in, I made you coffee and I found a way to provoke Janda into trying for the envelope again and getting caught."

"You made me coffee?" she raised a sceptical eyebrow as she watched him unbutton his shirt.

"Well, strictly speaking I made myself coffee, but you may have it, since I didn't drink it and you like yours cold…"

"How profoundly unromantic of you," she praised him, bracing her elbows against the mattress to half-rise.

He peered with an investigative look at her from under a mop of mussed hair, his shirt hanging off one shoulder as he paused his actions midway.

"That's good?" he made sure.

"Very. Tell me more about that plan of yours," she demanded, slipping out of the bed and padding across the room towards him to choose a dress for herself.

When she first put her clothes in his wardrobe on her previous visit, he didn't address the matter in any way, treating the occurrence silently and with seeming lack of notice or attention. It was their way of going about the little conveniences that for most people in relationships had the ridiculous dimensions of a milestone – an attitude she always scoffed at, and was glad to see Sherlock shared her point of view. When she went away, she left most of her clothes in his flat, and on arriving back again almost exactly a month ago, she found them just as they were, with the small addition of a few articles laundered and placed on the appropriate shelves and hangers. This time, she was the one who approached the fact with silence, and he seemed very relaxed about that. To dwell and point out the extents of their sentiment for each other would be uncomfortable in terms of a conversation simply about that subject. They had, in other ways, discussed, or rather, acknowledged, their sentiment on a few occasions, in their own fashion.

"The general idea is to have Georgiana Norton take the envelope and contact Janda about a meeting she has been postponing for a while," Sherlock answered her question. "While calling him, she will mention that she can meet him on her way to Collins' daughter, because she has a letter from her father to deliver to her. He should be desperate enough to take that chance, especially if she chooses a remote place for the meeting," he deliberated of a choice between two belts for a moment.

She nodded pensively, appraising the plan.

"About as impressively devious as your plan with Henry Knight and the hound," she remarked, and he scowled. (_"We go out and see if it goes after you"._)

"Simple solutions sometimes prove most effective."

"Well, with Henry, it didn't," she pointed out mercilessly. "As far as John's blog can be trusted, at least… god knows he glosses over the details sometimes – witness protection scheme in America…"

She glanced up at him playfully, and he looked down at her from askance, a vague shadow of a smirk playing about the corners of his lips, while his eyes gleamed. Framed with the misty white light sifting through the window, with his pale skin and black curls and those lips he looked like an unreachable fantasy that could plague Michelangelo himself.

They took a shower together. Since she wasn't seeing Georgiana Norton today (Erin Watts had a flight to Berlin), she returned to her much preferred habit of using Sherlock's gel and shampoo. She washed his hair for him, because she knew he liked it when she did it – he would become very peaceful and relaxed, but not at all retreated into himself, which was a rare combination in his case. With hot water falling on her head, flooding her face and pouring down her body as the steam filled her throat and lungs, she allowed the heat to take over her as he slowly wrapped his arms around her waist, with no purpose except simply doing it just because he could, and she closed her eyes, tilting her head back to catch a rivulet of water in her lips.

Sherlock was the only one with whom she closed her eyes, the reaction to and consequence of feeling secure in letting her guard down completely and admitting him to seeing her in the very essence, as she was. Realising this, she also became aware that the level of trust she had in him – the man who had almost destroyed her – was unmatched by any. But then, if he was her almost-destruction, she was his as well.

Equality was always the idea between them, she mused as she brushed away the wet strands of hair plastered to her face. Equality sparked their interest in each other, and as the challenge progressed, they found one another equal in more and more aspects of what was most important to them both – brains. Then came the equality of their infatuation with each other – oh, she had known the actual extent of Sherlock's interest in her before he discovered that in himself. Making him admit to that (in actions more than words…) was a delightful bonus.

When the relaxing effect of the shower wore off, Sherlock fell back into the state of agitation and restlessness, fiddling with his phone, pacing around the living room with occasional stops in front of his laptop and blocking out the external world. Still, his state of peace had lasted remarkably long – five whole minutes, something of a record, Irene mused.

Personally, she wasn't as worked up as he was, and she had no intentions of allowing him to wind her up. For her, the case was very much over, she had done her part, and the only thread that still needed snipping, was to break up with Georgiana Norton, but that would be too boringly easy to be even considered a task. And she wasn't very interested in the progression of Mycroft's hunt for Janda (unless he named a bounty for his capture, then her ears would prick up), nor in the reasons he had for it.

Sherlock, on the other hand…

* * *

"And then what happened?"

Irene gave a small smile, carefully placing two walnuts in her hand, adjusting them in the right position towards each other, and closed her hand, pressing them together, causing the shells to break. Sherlock brazenly stole one of them from her and started picking out the inside, meticulously dropping every piece of wood into an empty teacup, not letting anything fall onto his chair. John's attention hovered between the two of them, keen and impatient, but of course both of them had to keep up the suspense. He found that bloody irritating and smug.

"Then Mycroft called me and said they have Janda," Sherlock picked up the thread. "He wants me to take a look at a thing or two, of course… but nothing interesting."

"So, did you find out what was in the envelope?" John asked, also helping himself to some nuts, trying to repeat Irene's manoeuvre, and eventually having to embarrassingly settle for the nutcracker. She sure was stronger than she looked, probably because of her past dominatrix career… and he really didn't want to think about that, not when she and Sherlock were in the same room – wrong, so _wrong_, so very, very wrong…

Sherlock shook his head, getting that absent and thoughtful look on his face again (another cheekbone thing…), and Irene shook her head as well, but she definitely looked more communicative.

"No…" she said. "I'm betting it was a Nazi treasure location, it fulfils the criteria nicely… Collins couldn't use that during his life, because he would have to admit he found that with Moravec's help, and would then have to share with Janda. So he passed it on to his daughter. Sherlock," she turned to the detective with a slow, smoking look in smugly half-closed eyes, "thinks it was treasure, too. He's leaning more towards the less probable option of a sunken U-Boat… that's the pirate streak for you," she teased him softly, and John smiled slightly, remembering the surprisingly adorable (yes, Sherlock, adorable, there you have it!) revelation that Mycroft made once.

Sherlock scoffed briefly and focused on picking out the last piece of nut from the shell he had in his hands.

"But don't you want to know?" John didn't really quite get their lack of interest in the envelope. Apart from it being very interesting, they were _sleuths_, for crying out loud, they were supposed to be straining at the leash for this thing!

But, as always, they had their own opinions on the subject.

"Irrelevant," Sherlock shrugged succinctly.

"I'm already rich," Irene replied with saucy laziness as she stretched out on the sofa.

"Well, you were already rich when you blackmailed the British government…" John pointed out with a breath of sarcastic amusement in his voice.

"Oh, that was different, that was a game…" The Woman purred delightedly. "My game. And this one isn't mine."

John nodded, pretending to understand, but he was fairly sure his face reflected the actual state of his mind.

"Rrright…" he said slowly. "So, did you break up with Georgiana Norton?" he asked her.

"Yes. And as per your request, I was gentle."

"Oh?" he wasn't quite sure what _gentleness_ was in Irene Adler's execution.

"Yes. I got an amazing job offer I have always dreamed of – flights to New York, once a week, four days in new York each time. So I thought it would be best if I ended our relationship now, before things got ugly and so very unpleasant, especially considering a very deep scar left on me due to my previous break-up."

"Elegant," Sherlock murmured somewhat grudgingly, and treated himself to another walnut.

"So, case closed?" John frowned. "Just like that? No dramatic follow-up?"

"I don't think so," shrugged Sherlock.

"Well, the only drama will be family, junior wants to find out what Mycroft needs Janda for," Irene flippantly abandoned her selection of walnuts and picked up a newspaper, completely unaffected by Sherlock's passing glare.

"Oh?" John asked. "But… I mean, he's been after him for a couple of years about some drugs business, and he just wants him down, you said so yourselves," he pointed out. "So I guess he finally got the opportunity to get him off the streets…"

"Mycroft doesn't have interest in such petty matters," Sherlock scoffed, pulling up his legs and crossing them, becoming thoughtful. "If he wants Janda, there must be more to it than just some Nazi envelope or a retaliation to past mishaps."

John nodded, though not very convincingly – because he wasn't convinced in the first place. Sherlock sometimes was a bit too eager to see things about Mycroft – sure the older Holmes was rather… hmm, _shady_ and slippery and, well, just generally mysterious, but still… he couldn't live only and solely on some big operations and deep-running mysteries, could he? Sometimes he thought that sibling rivalry thing was really getting a bit too much to Sherlock.

"So, John, how are things with Mary?" Irene asked, smiling pleasantly as she turned a page in the paper.

"Good, thanks…" he replied cautiously, to which Irene only smiled wider. John's wariness grew.

"Pity she doesn't come with you more often," Irene arched her eyebrows briefly, looking at him over the paper. "I'd like to get to know her better."

John leaned back in his chair, dubiously raising an eyebrow. He couldn't help but analyse everything she said – she had this annoying way of making him think of things she said as codes, messages or innuendos, it was something about her _face_…!

"Okay, when you say that, it could mean a couple of things…" he said slowly.

Irene gave a small laugh, while Sherlock's lips curled into an amused smirk. John grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest – being the object of amusement for _both of them_ was ever so slightly above his limits. And he already should be considered extraordinarily tolerant, to have put up with Sherlock for all that time.

"Don't worry, dear, I'm not going to spook her," Irene's lips were stretched in a smile. "I was just asking, that's all. She's a nice thing. And it would be good for her to get a slightly better opinion on Sherlock. After all, he does get better and better the _closer_ you know him…" her smirk was definitely suggestive now, and John fought to banish some very bad images of Irene getting to know Sherlock _closer_.

"Fine, fine…" he said, desperately fending off the thought. "I'll think about that. I'll bring her over sometime soon. And _you_," he pointed forcefully at Sherlock, mindful of the outcome of last such planned meeting. "Are going to be home this time."

Sherlock scoffed angrily.

"It was an emergency-"

"Don't worry, John," Irene's voice cut smoothly through the detective's words. "I'll make sure he doesn't misbehave…"

* * *

Blood roared in her ears in the dizzying rush that swept across her whole body, flooding it with clear currents of torrential pleasure. She forced her eyes open to see him, going against herself to take in his face hovering above her, to see him and to experience it reinforced by the high of elation and a mixture of other emotions. His eyes burned, the blue almost completely obliterated by the hungry blackness of his expanded pupils, and despite the haziness swirling in his gaze, the suddenly struck connection was clear and almost painfully direct. In that moment the channel of their locked gazes was like a catalyst, because they both were willingly, deliberately opened up to each other completely.

He leaned in, breaking the connection, and kissed her, the touch soft and sweet, unlike their fervent kisses from just moments before. Their lips met and whispered together along with the hot breaths mingling between them, the kisses melting into each other, soft, wet and soothing. He ducked his head to trail more on her neck, his chest pressed against hers, and she could feel both of their heartbeats slowly beginning to calm from the fervent crescendo they had climbed to with the climax of their activity.

With her muscles almost liquefied with the pleasurable exhaustion, she reached her hand up, laying it on the back of his neck and running her fingers through the hair on the base of his head, collecting the dampness of sweat. He nuzzled the juncture of her neck and collarbone, and relaxed, laying his head in the crook of his shoulder, his full, now not anymore supported weight crushing the breath out of her for an initial moment, but she didn't really want him to more. They remained like this for a blissfully undefined moment, locked (yes, _locked_…) together, existing only in the reality of their embrace. But though small physically, this reality stretched into a dazzling infinity mentally.

She looked at him as he rose slightly above her, shifting to lie down on his side next to her, slipping his hand into hers and lacing their fingers together in a seemingly casual gesture, but the gentleness with which he did it revealed an extensive assortment of emotions. He shifted his weight again, stretching out his body so it would remain touching hers across all its length, and he met her gaze. There was a glow in his eyes, a residue of the unhidden shine of absolute light that filled them as he toppled over the brink of release just before she did. Glimmers of thoughts were already swirling in his gaze as he watched her, but unlike the time they had first met, his eyes were now enriched with softness, admittance and a sense of worship, while retaining the intrigue and interest in puzzle. What was completely gone from them, was the distrust that lingered in them across the entire complex choreography of deception he and she executed on each other across the months of their first meeting.

It was a paradox that they should trust each other of all people, while being both so very reluctant to trust to begin with, she thought as she traced various combinations of paths between the five tiny birthmarks on his chest. But if to look at it right, it was also, at the same time, inevitable that they would. The first trust they shared was already when they played at opposite sides – it was an unwavering trust in each other's abilities to pose the most intriguing and exercising challenge they had encountered yet. She trusted him to be her most difficult opponent yet, and he delivered. More than she expected, actually. And the fact that he did indeed defeat her, reaffirmed her trust in his abilities absolutely and completely, while his trust in her abilities was reinforced by the fact that she had managed to defeat him as well, use his own character to turn on him.

Then came the trust in their alliance of intellects – he saved her life in Karachi, claiming it was because he would be appalled and horrified to have a mind like hers removed from the world, though she knew sentiment was a factor even if he was unaware (or unwilling to be aware) of it. Then, in turn, she agreed to help him against Moriarty's crime empire after his faked suicide, and in a way, saved his life as well – to him, his persona of Sherlock Holmes, the genius, the detective and the genuinely brilliant man, was his life. Jumping for his friends, he quite literally gave his life for them, because he crossed out all that _was_ his life. And in her presence, he could restore it, for her he was Sherlock Holmes in all that he was before the fall. She was the only one who sustained the life of his Sherlock Holmes, because for Mycroft and Molly, the only two other people who knew he lived, he still wasn't who he wanted to be seen as. She worked and lived intellectually on his level and comprehended him for everything he was.

At last, the trust in each other's emotions – and their own, consequently and simultaneously. From the moment she discovered his sentiment for her and learned its extent, she trusted it absolutely to be what she thought it was, trusted it to be prevailing and unique – just like the sentiment she had for him. It was a thesis confirmed by the very nature of the two of them, their uniqueness and the understanding they had with each other, even if one of them vehemently protested. He had been vulnerable in his state of faked death, detached from his usual existence, from what he always termed as his very life, and it caused him to be less defensive. Oh, he sure was defensive verbally, but she was certain even he heard the blatant lack of sense in some of his arguments he made against her suppositions of emotional attachment on his part. At last, he gave in, and when he did – she did as well. Only, she had something else to give in to than acknowledgement of her feelings for him – that was his surrender. Her surrender was to let herself admit that her sentiment was genuine and would last. The idea of an eternal attachment of such strong emotions scared her in terms of losing some sort of unspecified integrity, and she had to surrender that fear which she used a shield and defence for all her life.

She did. Back then, in Montenegro, on that night when Moriarty's cute little nickname for Sherlock had finally stopped applying. And she had absolutely no regrets.

She leaned up slightly, and he instantly read her craving and catered to it, leaning in and pressing his lips against hers in an introduction to a slow, sensuous kiss. Oh, yes, he was special… he was the only one whom she trusted to know what she liked.

Sherlock placed a concluding kiss on her mouth, and brushed his lips against her chin, before moving slightly lower, inhaling the scent of her heated body. The complex fragrance of her warm skin tinged with his own scent surged straight to his head, and while it certainly was incorrect chemically and biologically, he was fairly sure it was more potent and intoxicating than any alcohol. It was a purely instinctive and sensual comprehension, he mused as he nuzzled the line of her smooth throat, bathing in the absolute pleasure this simple gesture provided for them both. It was also, perhaps, some instinct that caused him to prefer her to use his shampoo and showering gel, the vague tint of the fragrance he associated with himself and did not register on daily basis, now reinforced by her own skin, it had something of primal possession, perhaps.

It was an established dynamic – commenced, he supposed, on that evening in the living room, when the fireplace cast soft shadows on her face as he brushed his fingertips over the underside of her wrist – that she was the one to commence a seduction, make the first step from which both of them would then play equal parts. Sometimes, when feeling particularly demanding or wanting to amuse her, he would be the one to start, but it usually fell to her to initiate the games.

Today it had all started with him coming home to find that she'd bought him an airplane pilot's hat. The reference to her choice of disguise and the idea behind it was too clear to elude him, and yet, as he put the hat on to amuse them both, he realised it was an angle under which he failed to look at her disguise previously. She told him he looked very handsome, and that airy, direct compliment somehow evoked a strong reaction in him.

Continuing his slow progression, he nuzzled the smooth hollow between her breasts, her skin there now dry of sweat and tantalisingly soft to the point of becoming a sensual luxury. He brushed his lips over the swell of her breast, and lifted himself on his elbows, returning to level with her face, meeting her eyes that looked at him with clarity of colour misted with a lazy haze of pleasure. He looked at her, taking in every single detail of her appearance and the openness of her emotions that she purposefully was allowing him to see, and he swallowed hard over a constriction of sentiment in his throat. He leaned in and brushed a kiss over the tip of her pointy nose, his heart throbbing with a flood of tenderness, and as he pulled away he saw her eyes alight with unrestrained affection that mirrored his own.

He loved her. He repeated the just recently verbalised thought, and mused over it, finding a strange enjoyment in his newly formed understanding of the fact, as well as his surprisingly liberating (while all the time he'd expected the reverse effect) acceptance of it. And she knew, of course – before he did, he was sure of it. After all, _she_ never had a difficulty in reading _his_ feelings.

The intense blend of sheer affection, regard and desire – the three foundations, he realised, the three elements that his love comprised – mixed together tightly in his chest, almost imbibing him with the power of simple realisations.

_Mine_, he thought possessively as he leaned in to kiss The Woman (the only woman who mattered), reaffirming the statement. _Hers_, was an equally satisfactory counterpart which made him shiver with the magnitude of its meaning.

But it wasn't a shiver of fear anymore.

Time passed, but neither of them took any notice of it – it was pointless to do so, since there was nothing ahead of them except the next moment in each other's company, to put it trivially, and for that minutes and hours were unnecessary. Irene smiled as she slowly and repeatedly ran her hand through Sherlock's black curls, enjoying the richness softly sifting between her fingers, and watched the progressive relaxation that took over him. It was a rarity to relax the Great Detective so completely, and she playfully wondered if she shouldn't perhaps list this ability the next time she composed a CV.

Beside the bed, she spotted the pilot hat discarded there, and she grinned, reaching for it. Sherlock opened his eyes and sat up, stirred by her shifting so significantly, and she heard his deep, velvety chuckle as she triumphantly retrieved the hat that lay almost out of her reach on the floor. She smirked and placed it on his head, at a slightly rakish angle – more sexy that way, especially with that slightly tousled hair.

She knew Sherlock had much deep interest in her thesis concerning disguises, and while her choice to make Erin Watts a stewardess reflected some of her own qualities – independence, existence out of people's reach, authority, object of desire – she also supposed now, with hindsight, that there was some plan in it. A plan she made subconsciously, an intention to speak to Sherlock through her choice of disguise – that while she was coming and going, while she was out of reach, she would always have one point of importance, one constant that she would always come back to.

Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

Irene sat perched on the edge of Mycroft's desk, observing him sharply as he filled out the proper blanks on the cheque. The annoying woman was idly toying with an ornate barometer within her hand reach, and it irritated him slightly, but he was by no means willing to let it on. He sighed, transcribing the numbers into words. It was for a considerably smaller amount than the unmentionable sum she had demanded the last time she sat on his desk, but it still didn't rank among small numbers. Still, at least this amount was one he offered her willingly.

"Thank you for your services," he murmured, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.

"Oh, it was a pleasure, Mr Holmes, I assure you."

"Yes… and thank you for so effectively keeping Sherlock out of it," he looked up, looking her square in the eyes and letting her know he was well aware that she did just the opposite – although admittedly, he didn't find out until browsing through Georgiana Norton's statements on the case. "I'm most obliged…"

She smiled brazenly, sustaining the disturbingly direct eye contact.

"I did my best."

He could somewhat see why his brother was so foolishly in love with her – she had everything that appealed to Sherlock's tastes: the intelligence, the deviousness, the complexity, the refinement, the brazenness, and a dubious sense of humour.

"How is he, by the way?" he asked, returning to the cheque.

"Good," she replied in a light voice and with a mocking face of acknowledgement. "Picky with cases, as usually. He offended a French dignitary yesterday when he came for help, you might want to look into that… And… he's rather adamant to find out why you really need Janda."

Mycroft looked up again, slowly this time, and found her staring at him directly, with an irritating smirk playing about her lips. She lifted an eyebrow, her smile turning into one of teasing, mocking confidentiality.

"Shall I tell him that I know…?"

Mycroft pressed his lips together, responding with a thin, mirthless smile of his own. He should have anticipated that she would work this out sooner or later, and most of all, that she would do it before his brother did. After all, she knew what people liked, he thought derisively. She was clever, and he naturally respected that, but it didn't change the fact that he was irritated when she would use this cleverness against him. He didn't trust her, and since he didn't have too big a credit of trust for Sherlock either, he wasn't convinced his brother made the right choice in affiliating himself with this woman.

"Is it going to cost me a little bit extra if I ask you not to?" he asked back with mocking, cold friendliness.

She chuckled, her eyes shining as she slid off his desk and turned so that she would face him completely, bracing both neatly manicured hands on the shining surface.

"Of course not, Mr Holmes, we're not merely doing business anymore," she grinned, and he felt as if he were facing a predator idly contemplating for the right moment to strike. "I think we're something like _friends_ now. Why, if that pregnancy test _was_ mine, we'd be family," she mercilessly released the poisoned arrow.

He scowled openly, banishing the horrifying thought of what would happen if Sherlock and she produced a child together. The idea was an absolute abomination, a terrible, unbearable scenario with a terrifying percentage of plausibility. No matter how small that percentage was, it still was too high for his liking.

"Fine," he said, and cleared his throat, because he found his voice slightly strangled. "What _do_ you know?"

"Not much, I admit," she gave a small grin again. "Well, I only know what you like… you like things clear, both small and big. But clear for you, only, and not for anybody else. You like to be in control and you like to get what you want, but because you don't like risking your integrity, you are very careful about what you want. So based on that, I know you didn't want Janda for some Nazi mysteries or petty revenge for damaging your drugs case a few years ago. You want him caught on something, so that you can hold him – because once you hold him, you can force him to answer all sorts of questions. That's what you want him for – questions about something that happened once… about the leaks of information, perhaps?"

Mycroft sighed and very carefully closed his fountain pen, before looking up at Irene Adler again. She was mostly right and only lacked details, details which she wouldn't obtain, but this was enough to begin with. And if she could figure this out, then sooner or later Sherlock would as well.

"Very well," he said with a thin smile again. "I would be very grateful if you didn't mention this to my brother. I don't want him… _nosing around_ this problem… whereas as to you, I am strangely confident you won't."

"You're right," she agreed calmly. "I won't. I'm not that interested."

He nodded, opened his pen and placed his signature on the cheque. Done. But his contacts with The Woman certainly weren't. And it didn't seem as if they would be – Sherlock definitely wasn't willing to relinquish her.

He watched her leave after she folded the cheque and slipped it into the pocket of her expensive jacket, and turned around with a farewell smile that she somehow managed to make more annoying than all the others today. Still, he respected her intelligence – he meant what he had said, he did wish his lot were half as good as she was.

Oh, yes, he did very much indeed…

Sombre, once again feeling the thick shroud tighten around him, he got up from the desk and walked over to the glassed cabinet. He measured all his movements carefully, trying to focus on them and derive some sort of mental stability from his physical stability – it didn't work very well, but his only choice was… well, he didn't know what it was. And he certainly didn't want to find out. He poured himself a good measure of whisky, filling the large, heavy glass halfway up, and returned to the desk, placing the glass on it as he sat in the chair, turning the drink in his hand for a moment.

The shroud around him was growing tighter, pressuring him, and he felt a heavy burden beginning to grow inside his chest, interfering with the ease of his breathing. He raised the glass and took a swig, fighting the pressure off with the rapid burn of alcohol sliding down his throat, and breathed in and out through his mouth, masking a dreary sigh as a measured exhalation.

Things weren't good – to say the least… Having captured Janda, he stood a chance of improving the matters, but even in the recklessness of hope he could see the slim probability of it. And he seldom allowed himself hope, since it wasn't very much in his nature to colour something with pessimism or optimism. He preferred to see things clearly. But… presently, the clear reality was so disconcerting that he almost wished for the illusion that hope could provide him with.

He took another swig, determined to gather himself together – there were still a few rounds left before everything was decided, so he definitely couldn't let himself go now.

"Anthea?" he was pleased with the cool steadiness of his voice, and it fed him additional confidence, like a self-perpetuating cycle.

"Sir?" his PA emerged at the doorstep, flawless, professional and perfectly empty. He leaned back in his chair, looking at her for a moment, tracing a finger over the rim of his glass.

"Do you remember something I asked you to do a few days ago?"

"Which thing, Sir?" she asked, looking at him with vague eyes and a hint of a smile.

"The file."

"Oh," a perfect tone of pleasantly surprised recollection. "Yes. Do you want it back?"

"No. Keep it – for now. I need you to do something for me again," he pulled out the top drawer of his desk and produced a keylogger. "I'm going to invite Harry to my office for a _chat_ tomorrow… plant this in his keyboard. You'll need at least five minutes for the operation itself – I'll try to make sure everyone has something to do away from his office."

He held the keylogger on open palm, the gesture adding a silent 'please' to his words – she didn't have to do this. By no means. But the reason he trusted her was the same reason he knew she would.

Anthea approached him, her heels tapping slowly on the floor, and she took the device from his open hand, closing it in hers.

"Will do, boss."

"Very well."

He gave a thin smile in response, and got up from his desk, standing before the window, hands folded behind his back, and stared into the falling evening. But despite of the day coming to a definitive end, he rather sensed a feeling of approach hovering in the atmosphere.

"Let the games begin."

* * *

**And so the sequel is introduced. I hope to complete the first chapter soon.**

**Technical corner****: A keylogger is a device that, when inserted into a keyboard, records and stores every keystroke of that keyboard, which means you can read everything (emails, passwords, numbers) written on that keyboard. It also was used in a major bank robbery once.**

**I know the plot may seem to have finished in a weird way, but it was intentional - the mystery wasn't the most important thing in this story, neither for the plot or the characters. And as to why Mycroft really needed Janda - we'll find out in the sequel. Summary available on my profile :)**

**Please review! I relish reviews :D**


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